A few weeks ago, I chaired a debate in Westminster about the falling birth rate and its implications. It was organised by the Centre for Social Justice, which I’ve long been proudly involved with. Miriam Cates, a Tory MP, was on the panel as was Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP. But when I arrived, Duffield had pulled out: she had taken so much abuse and threats from those furious that she would attend this debate that she felt she could not continue. The debate, quite plainly, is one many people would rather never took place and I look at it in my Daily Telegraph column today.

While populists have embraced this argument, there is nothing populistic about it. These are issues about the future, shape and structure of our societies – and whether the declining birth rate threatens the future of the welfare state. My own view is that it does, and we’re living a lie by assuming that there will be a massive workforce around to generate tax to support the pensions and related NHS expenditure (most of which goes on pensioners) in the future.

South Korea has spent £160 billion on this issue since 2006; since then, its fertility rate has declined by 25 per cent

But I’m also not sure that anything can be done to change a trend which reflects changing priorities. I’d recommend Stephen Shaw’s YouTube documentary about this which concluded that natalist policies have so far failed everywhere. Millions are actively making a choice not to have kids and there is not much the state can do to cajole or bribe them to change their minds. China shows that the state can prevail upon citizens to reduce family size, but South Korea shows the limits of bribes. My feeling is that this trend is global, irreversible and we’d best start thinking about the consequences, because the promise of a pension – made to those starting work now – was made on a demographic premise that is turning out to be false. People just don’t want kids in a way that the architects of the welfare state imagined and immigration won’t make up the gap as the migrants soon conform to social norms.

While researching this topic, I came across many points that I didn’t have space to use in the article. For those interested, here they are:

1. Italy’s birth rate is a shocker – barely a third of what it was when Italy was created in 1861. Its census results were out this week (and the peg for my column), showing a slower decline ‘thanks to the positive dynamics of the foreign population’, a subject now close to the heart of Italian political debate.

2. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni makes much play about demographics, saying she’s out to defend God and the family. Her policies to address this are paltry, yet she is an astute political entrepreneur. Her success shows how many votes there are in simply having the courtesy to discuss this important topic with people who see, in their own communities, the effect of childbirth decline.

3. Populists world over are embracing nativism and immigration as a theme. France’s Le Monde newspaper: ‘In the opinion of Marine Le Pen, the deficit forecasts could be corrected by straightening the curve of the birth rate along with productivity gains. “Birth rate” and “productivity”: The party has linked these two words and used them as a mantra since the beginning of 2023.’ From Alternative für Deutschland’s 2017 manifesto: ‘Germany has the lowest birth rate across Europe. On the one hand, this is due to an increase of childless families, and on the other hand, it is due to a decrease of large families. Should we not put an end to this undesirable demographic development, our pension schemes, our health insurance, and our nursing care insurance systems will collapse.’

4. Donald Trump made the appalling accusation that immigrants are ‘poisoning’ the American bloodstream. This is repellent, but if this persuades politicians to avoid the birth-rate agenda they will be handing the subject on a plate to populists. Meloni shares some stylistic touches with populists but her government has been a source of stability in Italy. Populism is, always and everywhere, the result of the failure of established political parties to respond to an important new argument. But there is nothing populist about the natalist argument as it contains many big and heartfelt issues, such as the debate about childcare costs.

5. Do childcare costs discourage larger families? It makes perfect sense that they might. But while researching this, I was unable to find any correlation between childcare costs and fertility. What I found was, on the contrary, a slight negative correlation. Japan and South Korea, two countries where the low birth rate is treated as a national crisis, have very cheap childcare. I’m not reading anything into this crude comparison other than to say it was a surprising discovery. Rishi Sunak recently spent billions extending childcare. But while this may help repair the workforce, I’m not sure it will help up the birth rate.

6. The population replacement level is 2.1 kids per women. At 1.57, the UK’s rate is higher than most. But still the UK effect is pronounced in that our population of school pupils is expected to enter terminal decline, falling 9 per cent over the next nine years. If class sizes stay the same, this will mean a corresponding drop in schools and teachers.

7. Hungary has had well-publicised success reversing birth rate decline after very expensive subsidies. It boasts about it in its regular Budapest Demographic Summit. But those who think this means cash is the answer need to explain South Korea, which has spent $200 billion (£160 billion!) on this since 2006; since then, its fertility rate has declined by 25 per cent

8. It’s not quite right to assume South Korea sidestepped the one-child Chinese madness, which was based on the global panic stoked by the likes of Paul Ehrlich and his demented ‘population bomb’ theory of the 1970s, which argued that the human population was too great. The Koreans were in a panic about having too many babies – and were quite literally giving them away in the 1970s and 80s when its military rulers encouraged mass foreign adoption. Later, parents were subject to propaganda efforts telling them to cut down on kids. At one stage, men could dodge the draft if they had a vasectomy. South Korea’s problem now can be seen in the context of the broader Asian panic – and in the still-strong stigma of having kids outside of marriage.

9. A third of Japanese 18-year-olds will never have children, according to a survey that puts the lowest number at 25 per cent and the highest at 42 per cent. This figure really stuck with me as it changes the assumptions that my generation grew up with. Families in Japan are staying the same size: its issue is a rise in women who never have kids. Prime minister Fumio Kishida promised in June to tackle the population crisis with ‘unprecedented’ measures, including bigger payouts for families with three or more children.

10. Eco-anxiety could be part of the rising no-kid culture. This case was articulated well by Tom Woodman in a Spectator article. ‘Everything inside me says ‘have children’, but it’s everything outside that makes so many of my generation say ‘no’. The scientific consensus is clear: unless we all take drastic steps to limit our carbon emissions, the planet will become uninhabitable…  Having a child inflicts far more harm on the planet than all the jet-setting and steak-eating you might do: it wipes out any climate good we can as individuals hope to achieve during our lifetimes.‘

This topic is a fascinating collection of different concerns and cultures. There is so much that you can add. For example, when I chaired that debate, various women in the audience made a good point; they are under the statistical microscope but what about the lack of men ready to start a family? Too many man-boys playing video games and stretching out the carefree period of their life before the arrival of the pram in the hall. As one woman put to me afterwards, ‘women need men who have got their shit together’. This is a complaint reflected in music (Beyoncé’s Bills and Single Ladies) but not yet captured by social science. The point is that it’s unfair to place all the blame on women if, for various reasons, society is churning out fewer eligible men.

The Ehrlich madness taught us the danger of reading too much into any extrapolated population trend, so this picture will certainly change. But as things stand, it raises important questions about the future of the welfare state – questions too important to be left to the populist fringes.

PS. Robert Colvile, who runs the Centre for Policy Studies (on whose board I sit) asks why I don’t mention property prices. Isn’t it common sense to say that people won’t have families if they can’t afford a big enough house? I did look at this theory (popular in London) but it collapses quickly when applied regionally, let alone internationally. Wales has the UK’s lowest birth rate, for example; property there is not especially expensive. OECD data puts Slovakia at the top end of the housing costs chart but its birth rate is higher than Chile (1.54) which has some of the lowest property costs. Rent in Latvia is far cheaper than the UK but we have the same birth rate (1.55). All told, falling birth rates are a multi-decade, uninterrupted worldwide trend that do not seem especially responsive to house price signals.