The fertility rate in England and Wales has dropped to its lowest level since records began in the 1930s, new government data shows.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the total fertility rate – the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime – was 1.44 children per woman in 2023, the lowest since records started in 1938.
The number of live births also fell, to 591,072 – the lowest total since 1977.
In England and Wales, the fertility rate has been less than two children per woman since the 1970s.
Women would need to have an average of 2.08 children to guarantee what the ONS terms “the long-term ‘natural’ replacement of the population”.
The situation in England and Wales mirrors wider global trends, with fertility rates slowly declining around the world and falling by more than half since the early 1960s.
In 2022, the global total fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman, while it was 1.5 in the European Union.
Although the total fertility rate has plunged to record lows, the number of women who are of childbearing age is the highest it has ever been. There were nearly 11.9m women between the age of 15 and 44 in England and Wales last year.
Greg Ceely, of the ONS, said: “Total fertility rates declined in 2023, a trend we have seen since 2010. Looking in more detail at fertility rates among women of different ages, the decline in fertility rates has been the most dramatic in the 20-24 and 25-29 age groups.”
It comes after recent research by the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies found two fifths of 32-year-olds in England are keen to have children for the first time or expand their family – yet only a quarter of them are trying to conceive.
The study discovered more than half of this generation already have children, while half of those who are not parents are eager to have kids.
Economic pressures, career factors, struggling to meet the right person to settle down with, and not feeling ready to have children are the main reasons millennials are not trying to conceive.
ONS data shows the average age of first birth for women born in 1946 was 23 years – with around half of women born that year having a child before reaching the age of 24.
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