Should the UK try to raise its birth rate rather than rely on immigration to fill the workforce?
The UK has no formal policy aimed at raising the birth rate. The total fertility rate in England and Wales fell to a record low of 1.39 in 2025, against about 2.1 needed to maintain population size without migration. Net migration fell to 171,000 in the year to December 2025, down from 331,000 a year earlier. The Resolution Foundation has found that subsidies and parental leave do little to change the total number of births. In 2025, 34.6% of births were to mothers born outside the UK.
5 Opinions
This is a funny question. I've defended big families, been told there are too many people in the UK, now here we are, being told we have a low birth rate. That's obvious if you look.. You can't make couples get pregnant with an incentive. Not every woman wants children, not all women are maternal, some cannot have children. It'll be at least 20 years until we have enough home grown children, if not more. We need immigrants, they help keep the UK going, always have.
The Nordics have already tried subsidies and it doesn't work. Unless the UK can come up with some brand new scheme to increase fertility without authoritarianism à la communist Romania, there's no point in wasting money on 'cash for kids'.
These policies simply don’t work in any meaningful way. And most policies are regressive favouring wealthy and privileged groups more. It’s simply a very poor answer to a big question
As shown in other comments here, this type of thing very quickly slips into eugenics
Yes, but try to target the efforts at the demographics most likely to become net contributors. We shouldn't spend money to encourage the sections of the populace that tend to marry their cousins.