Educating women in the UK – should we?
“Spending so much time and money on education also makes it much more difficult, particularly for women, to decide when is a good time to pause and have children.”
Miriam Cates (MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge) May 2023
[Hello and welcome. I am going to count this post as the first of 2024. The above quote had me thinking…. What lay behind it? Some thoughts…]
The Conservative MP, Miriam Cates, has claimed the UK’s low birthrate is ‘the most pressing policy issue of our generation’ and is caused in part by ‘cultural Marxism’ stripping young people of any hope. She believes women in the UK should have more children, and fewer women should go to university (presumably because that gets in the way of procreating).
Let’s examine some facts about population in the UK and the world.
Fertility:
The number of children per woman fell:
· from 2.24 in 1950 to 1.56 in 2021 in the United Kingdom, a drop of 30%.
· the number of children per woman worldwide has fallen from 4.86 in 1950 to 2.32 in 2021, a drop of 52%.
[Note the replacement rate for fertility is 2.1]
Life expectancy at birth:
Life expectancy (the age you can expect to live at birth) is increasing:
· from 68.6 years in 1950 to 81.7 in 2019 (the last year before the Covid pandemic which distorted life expectancy) in the UK – an increase of 13.1 years.
· for the world the comparative figures are 46.5 to 72.8 – an increase of 26.3 years.
Average age
The average (median) age of the population is also rising:
· from 33.9 years in 1950 to 39.8 in 2022 in the UK – an increase of 5.9 years.
· for the world the comparative figures are 22.2 to 30.2 – an increase of 8 years.
The combination of fewer children, people living longer, and an older average population have a direct impact on another important feature - the number of retirees in relation to the number of working people….
Old age dependency
This refers to the percentage of people over 64 (and therefore assumed to be retired), in relation to the working population (aged 15 to 64).
· in the UK this rose from 16.3% in 1950 to 29.8% in 2021 – an increase of 13.5%.
· for the world the comparative figures are 8.5% to 14.8% – an increase of 6.3%.
The higher this figure rises, the more each working person must pay for a larger number of pensioners: with a ratio of 10%, there is one pensioner for every 10 working people; with a ratio of 33%, there is one pensioner for every 3 working people.
Furthermore, emigration of even a small percentage of a country's working population will greatly accentuate the problem of an ageing population and the number of retirees per working person.
This ratio has a direct effect on economic growth and the ability of governments to raise taxes: fewer people working in an economy means less growth, and less tax revenue.
Some have suggested that this will lead to a collapse of the pension system….
Four ways to avoid a collapse of the pension system (and a significant economic downturn) are:
· to have more children i.e. to increase the workforce
· to open the country up to immigration
· to raise the retirement age
· to raise taxes.
Returning to the start of this post, a Conservative politician in the UK will not do at least two of these options (re. immigration and tax), and one option would be politically difficult (re. retirement age).
So, there is one option left. Is this why Ms Cates has her views?
What do you think?