Population Change in the United Kingdom
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Population Change in the United Kingdom
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Overview
This book shows that the UK's population is increasing faster than at any point in the last 100 years, it is getting progressively older and it is becoming more diverse culturally and ethnically. More school leavers are going on to university. Cohabitation has been replacing marriage, more children live in one-parent families and young adults are finding it harder to get on the property ladder. Many women are delaying having children until their 40s. Cities have seen a resurgence in population but there is still pressure on the countryside, while the north-south divide is getting ever wider, as too are local socio-economic disparities. The contributors to this book document these changes, examine their causes and discuss future prospects and their policy implications.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783485932 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/27/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 276 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Jane Falkingham is Professor of Demography and International Social Policy at the University of Southampton and Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change whose remit is to ‘improve our understanding of the drivers and consequences of populations change’. She is the current (2015-17) BSPS President.
Contributors:
Ann Berrington, Professor of Demography and Social Statistics, University of Southampton
Jakub Bijak, Associate Professor of Demography, University of Southampton
Gemma Catney, Dept of Geography, University of Liverpool
Ernestina Coast, Assoc. Prof. of Population Studies, London School of Economics
Ian Diamond, University of Aberdeen
George Disney, post-graduate, University of Southampton
Sylvie Dubuc, London School of Economics
Maria Evandrou, Professor of Gerontology, University of Southampton
Nissa Finney, University of St Andrews
Emily Freeman, Dept of Health and Social Policy, London School of Economics
Ursula Henz, Dept of Sociology, London School of Economics
Sarah Lubman, postdoc, University of Southampton
Alan Marshall, Dept of Geography, University of St Andrews
James Nazroo, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester
Paul Norman, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Leeds
Ludi Simpson, Professor of Population Studies, University of Manchester
Athina Vlachantoni, Associate Professor of Gerontology, University of Southampton
Arkadiusz Wiśniowski, University of Southampton
Read an Excerpt
Population Change in the United Kingdom
By Tony Champion, Jane Falkingham
Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Tony Champion and Jane FalkinghamAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-593-2
CHAPTER 1
Population Change in the UK: What Can the Last Twenty-Five Years Tell Us about the Next Twenty-Five Years?
Jane Falkingham and Tony Champion
The population of the UK is undergoing some fundamental transformations that have major implications in key areas of the economy, society, politics and environment. The population is currently increasing in size at a faster rate than for several decades, it is growing progressively older and it is becoming more diverse in ethnic and cultural terms. More school leavers are continuing into higher education, sexual behaviour has altered enormously, cohabitation has been replacing marriage, more children are living in one-parent families or with a step-parent, young adults are finding it harder to get on the housing ladder and to establish their own household, and more women are delaying having children until their late thirties and forties. Many cities have seen population resurgence, but there are still pressures on the countryside, the north-south divide is as great as ever and socioeconomic disparities between individuals and communities are widening. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the key changes in the size and composition of the population of the UK and of its four constituent countries over the last quarter of a century since the publication of The Changing Population of Britain (Joshi, 1989a), and then looks forward to speculate about what the next twenty-five years might have in store.
POPULATION GROWTH AND THE DRIVERS OF POPULATION CHANGE
Over the past fifty years, the population of the UK has increased by over ten million, from 54 million in 1964 to reach 64.6 million in 2014 (ONS, 2015a). Across this period, however, growth rates have been very uneven, as shown in Figure 1.1. From a high of 0.68 per cent per annum in 1964, reflecting the peak of the 1960s baby boom, over the next decade growth rates fell consistently (with the exception of 1971), and by 1975 annual growth was negative. The UK population actually declined in size between 1975 and 1978, and although positive rates of growth returned, this was short-lived, with 1982 witnessing negative growth of -0.12 per cent per annum, the biggest fall in the postwar period. Population growth rates picked up again in the mid-1980s and then remained fairly stable until the end of the 1990s, at around 0.2 to 0.3 per cent per annum. The dawn of the new millennium marked a change in gear, and growth rates doubled from 0.34 per cent in 2000 to 0.68 per cent in 2006, peaking at 0.82 per cent in 2008 and 0.84 per cent in 2011. Interestingly, although the annual growth rate of the population in the UK in 2014 is very similar to the level witnessed fifty years previously, the drivers behind this current growth are quite different.
The three demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration determine the size, composition and distribution of a population. Figure 1.2 shows the trend in the annual number of births and deaths in the UK over the past half century. The number of births peaked in 1964 at just over one million and then fell to a low of 657,000 in 1977, when the number of births was almost exactly matched by the number of deaths, resulting in zero rates of natural increase (i.e., births minus deaths) in the population. Although there was then a slight rise in the number of births, reflecting the fact that those women and men born in the 1960s were now starting to form their own families, the annual number of births did not exceed eight hundred thousand throughout the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the growth rates in Figure 1.1 almost exactly track the changes in the number of births in Figure 1.2. Thus, at the time of the publication of the Changing Population of Britain in 1989, it was principally the rate of natural increase (or the lack thereof) that had determined the rate of population growth for the preceding three decades.
The higher growth rate in recent years has been fuelled by a combination of accelerating natural increase and stronger net immigration from abroad, as shown in Figure 1.3. The annual number of births grew steadily from 679,000 in 2000 to nearly 813,000 in 2012, whilst the number of deaths reduced from 610,500 in 2000 to 570,300 in 2014, giving a much more positive rate of natural increase than for any period since the 1960s (Figure 1.2). Meanwhile, net inward migration added an average of over 240,000 persons per year to the UK population between 2004 and 2014. ONS's estimates of Long Term International Migration (LTIM) show that net migration stood at 336,000 in the year ending June 2015, up from 254,000 in the previous year (ONS, 2015b). EU citizens accounted for 42 per cent of the gross immigration to the UK in 2015, with non-EU citizens comprising 45 per cent and returning British citizens the remaining 13 per cent. The increase in net migration in the mid-2000s was fuelled by the arrival in the UK of migrants from the EU A8 accession countries, most notably Poland, whilst the recent increase in EU immigration in 2014 to 2015 has been partly driven by EU2 (Bulgaria and Romania) citizens. As documented in more detail in Chapter 4 by Jakub Bijak and his colleagues, the majority of these immigrants are in their twenties and thirties and thus of prime reproduction age, so the indirect effect on the size of the population is even greater through their additional contribution to the number of births. Recent data show that around a quarter of all live births in England and Wales in 2014 were to mothers born outside the UK (ONS, 2015c; see also Chapter 5 by Sylvie Dubuc).
The four constituent countries of the UK have not experienced equal population growth. Between 2013 and 2014, whilst the UK as a whole grew by 0.77 per cent, Wales grew by just 0.31 per cent, Scotland by 0.37 per cent and Northern Ireland by 0.59 per cent, with England being the fastest growing at 0.84 per cent. At the regional level within England, the growth rate was highest in London, at 1.45 per cent, followed by the East and South East, at 1.08 per cent and 0.92 per cent, respectively (ONS, 2015a). Although no region of England experienced a population decrease at this time, in some cases this was due to net immigration from overseas offsetting the effect of net migration loss to the rest of the UK. As Chapter 8 shows (see Table 8.2), a net flow into the south and east of England still occurs, but its size fluctuates over time and is much smaller now than in the 1980s, even to the extent that there is a reverse flow in some years.
The most dramatic change in the spatial redistribution compared to a quarter century ago, however, has been at the urban rather than regional scale. As also documented in Chapter 8, the UK has seen an urban resurgence, with the switch from a 'counter-urbanisation' pattern of population change (where growth rates are inversely related to settlement size) to one of 'urbanisation' (where the largest cities are the fastest-growing places). London led the way in the later 1980s, with other large cities following suit a decade or so later. Higher rates of immigration have been the main driver of this urban recovery, along with stronger natural increase, but a contributory factor has been a reduction in the rate of migration from town to country. The latter was particularly marked during the 2008-2009 recession and its immediate aftermath, but its onset predates then, and the subsequent rebound has been slower than after previous recessions, raising questions about whether a different migration regime may be merging — one that may involve a general decline in people's frequency of moving home, as is now being observed in the USA (see Chapter 8 for more detail).
How does the UK compare with other countries in terms of overall growth rate? With a population of 64.4 million, in 2014 the UK had the third largest population in Europe (excluding Russia), just behind France (65.8 million) and Germany (80.7 million) (ONS, 2015d). However, its growth rate of 0.7 per cent was over twice that of Germany (0.3 per cent) and higher than France (0.42 per cent), meaning that other things remaining equal, the UK might look set to move up the EU population league table. However, these data predate the impact of the wave of migrants from Syria, the Middle East and North Africa that arrived in Europe during 2015-2016, many of whom have settled in Germany and France, bolstering their growth rates.
CHANGING COMPOSITION OF THE POPULATION
As well as increasing in size, the composition of the UK population has changed significantly across the last quarter century, most notably becoming older and significantly more ethnically diverse.
Changing Age Structure
Past trends in fertility, mortality and migration all influence the age structure of the population. Births determine the number of people entering the population at its base, and the trends in births presented previously in Figure 1.2 can be clearly seen in Figure 1.4, which shows the UK population by single year of age in 2014. The people born in the peak birth cohort of 1964 are now aged fifty, whilst those born in the baby boom that occurred immediately following the end of World War II, in 1946 and 1947, are aged sixty-six to sixty-seven. Interestingly, however, although the 'baby bust' years of the 1970s are also clearly visible in the dip in the number of people currently aged in their mid-thirties, the numbers in their twenties and mid-thirties are much higher than would be signposted purely by the number of births twenty to thirty years earlier — with their ranks swelled by the in-migration of young people of working age during the past decade.
The UK, in common with all the countries of Europe, is ageing, with the median age of the population having increased from 33.9 years in 1974 to 40.0 years in 2014, an average rise of 1.5 years each decade. However, the UK has been ageing less rapidly than, for example, Germany, where the median age in 2014 was 45.6, and Italy, where it was 44.7 (Eurostat, 2015), reflecting the arrival of younger migrants in the UK combined with its higher birthrate.
Even so, there are now more older people living longer than ever before. Mortality rates have fallen at all ages over the past fifty years, and these improvements have been most significant amongst infants and for those aged fifty-five and over. Improvements in survivorship mean that the onset of old age is being delayed (see Falkingham, 2016). If one thinks of the onset of 'old age' as being when there is a 1 per cent chance of dying and the onset of 'older old age' as being when there is a 10 per cent chance of dying, it is clear that 'old age' is being increasingly postponed. Levels of mortality that used to prevail for people aged in their early fifties are now prevailing in the early sixties; for men, the age when there is first a 1 per cent of chance of dying has risen from fifty-two in 1955 to sixty-three in 2015, and for women it has shifted from fifty-eight to sixty-eight. Similarly, the onset of 'older old age' has moved from seventy-seven for men in 1955 to eighty-six in 2015, and from eighty to eighty-eight amongst women (ONS, 2015e). The good news is that sixty really is the new fifty.
One of the most noteworthy changes in the UK population over the past twenty-five years has been a rise in the proportion aged ninety and over. This has been the fastest growing age group. In 1989, when the Joshi volume was published, people aged ninety and over accounted for 0.4 per cent of the population (403 per every 100,000 UK residents); in 2014 this figure had more than doubled to 0.8 per cent (853 per every 100,000 UK residents). Moreover, in 1989 there were just 4,370 centenarians (people aged one hundred and over) living in the UK; by 2014 the number had risen by 230 per cent to 14,450 (ONS, 2015f). The growth of the oldest-old poses particular challenges for health and social care, as it is these age groups that are most in need of support for everyday living (see Chapter 2 for a fuller discussion).
Changing Ethnic Composition
Perhaps the most significant change to Britain's population over the past quarter of a century has been its increasing ethnic diversity. As discussed in Chapters 4, 5 and 9, the ethnic diversity of the population reflects the various waves of immigration to the UK over the past fifty years. In 2014, 13 per cent of the usual resident population of the UK were born abroad, comprising 8.3 million people (ONS, 2015g). Of these, three million were from the rest of the EU, with an estimated 790,000 born in Poland, 383,000 in the Republic of Ireland, 302,000 in Germany, 170,000 in Romania, 150,000 in Italy and 147,000 in France. Outside the EU, the five most common countries of birth were India (793,000), Pakistan (523,000), Bangladesh (212,000), South Africa (201,000) and China (196,000).
Table 1.1 shows the changing composition of the population of England and Wales by ethnicity. The growing number of UK residents who were born elsewhere in the EU is reflected in the rise in the proportion of the population who identified as 'White Other' between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses (ONS, 2012a; ONS, 2015h). There has also been an increase in those identifying themselves as being of mixed heritage, increasing from 1.4 per cent to 2.2 per cent, reflecting the growing number of children born to inter-ethnic couples. In 2011, nearly one in ten people who were living as part of a couple in England and Wales were in an inter-ethnic relationship, equivalent to 2.3 million people (ONS, 2014a). Moreover, 7 per cent of dependent children lived in a household with an inter-ethnic relationship.
This ethnic mixing is just one line of evidence that suggests that a process of integration is under way. Another is the observation by Sylvie Dubuc in Chapter 5 that the fertility of migrants and minority ethnic groups is converging towards that of White British women. Additionally, in Chapter 9, Nissa Finney and Gemma Catney demonstrate that ethnic mixing is taking place not only between people but also over space, with minority groups moving to new locales away from the places of original settlement. They show that the minority presence is increasing in previously 'White' spaces, and not just due to asylum dispersal strategies but also paralleling the suburbanisation of the White population. Nevertheless, in most cases this dispersal process does little to reduce the size of the ethnic minority concentrations because the effect of their departure has been offset by new arrivals from overseas, swelling the number of overseas-born there and leading to an expansion of the zones with 'majority minority' populations, with implications for a range of services, most notably education and health, and also potentially for community relations given the steadily increasing diversity within the minority population itself.
Changing Families and Households
Substantial changes are occurring in the patterns of family formation and dissolution in the UK, as very widely across Europe. Declining marriage, increasing cohabitation, the legalisation of same-sex civil partnerships and marriages, delayed fertility and increasing childlessness have resulted in new forms of families and households, with British families becoming considerably more diverse. In Chapter 6, Ursula Henz looks at family change from a child's perspective, examining three aspects of children's families: the size of the sibling group, living with a lone mother and mothers' labour-force participation.
When the Joshi volume was published, one of the most notable changes in families with dependent children over the preceding two decades had been the growth of lone-parent families. In 2015, as shown in Table 1.2, there were 3.1 million lone-parent families, of which two million contained dependent children (aged under sixteen or aged sixteen to eighteen in full-time education). These lone parents with dependent children comprised around a quarter of all families with dependent children, a figure only slightly higher than the 22 per cent share in 1996. In contrast, the fastest growing family type over the past two decades has been cohabiting couples, more than doubling to 3.2 million in 2015, of which 1.3 million were with dependent children (Table 1.2).
This change reflects the continued shift away from childbearing within marriage highlighted by Kathleen Kiernan's chapter in Joshi (1989a). Even in 1989, 27 per cent of all births were to parents outside a legal union; in 2014, nearly half of all births (47 per cent) were outside a marriage or civil partnership (ONS, 2015j). Births outside marriage or civil partnership can be registered solely by the mother or jointly by both the mother and the father/ second parent. In the latter case, where parents give the same address, it can be inferred that they are cohabiting. The proportion of births registered to cohabiting parents has increased in recent years, with just under a third of all births (32 per cent) being registered to cohabiting parents in 2014, compared with 27 per cent in 2004 and 10 per cent in 1986. In contrast, the percentage of births registered solely by the mother has fallen from 7.2 per cent in 1986 to 5.4 per cent in 2014 (ONS, 2015j). Thus, more births are taking place in the context of both partners being present, this in part being a reflection of the rise in the average age of parenthood, given that the majority of births registered by the mother alone are to younger mothers.
(Continues...)
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