Overview

• Official ONS data confirm the total fertility rate fell to 1.41 in 2024, the third consecutive annual drop and the lowest on record.
• Immediate service impacts are emerging, with schools closing or merging, including Westminster consolidations, and education funding projected to fall by about £1bn by 2030.
• Demographers describe a demographic transition that will require rethinking working lives and reforming social care as fewer family carers are available in older cohorts.
• Long-term projections show overall population growth to around 86 million by 2100 if net migration continues, compared with a fall to about 48 million without it.
• Commentary highlights rising lifetime childlessness as a key driver of lower births and notes arguments that environmental gains and advances such as AI could temper labour-supply concerns.