Changes in the population of England & Wales (from ONS - I chose E&W rather than UK because the UK figures only go back to 1971), banded by age. It's up to you which type of chart you prefer (the first one shows the changes in each age band much more clearly but the second one also shows the increase in the total population):
To cut a long story:
* the number of children aged 0 - 17 has declined ever so slightly (by quarter of a million)
* half the increase in population of 13 million between 1961 and 2020 is down to longer life expectancy - there are 6.5 million more people aged 60+ (an increase of two-thirds in that age band, or a compound growth rate of 5% per year).
* the other half of the increase is in people aged 18 - 59 (an increase of a quarter in that age band, a compound growth rate of less than 0.5% per year). You can see it's a fairly straight line from the mid-1970s onwards, so although Labour did open the immigration floodgates in 1997 or thereabouts, this did not lead to a step-change in the pace of growth of the middle age-band.
* So the increase in the number of 18 - 59 year olds is down to a combination of there having been more 0 - 17 year olds earlier on; better health care; and net immigration (let's allocate a third of the increase to each cause, for sake of argument).
A cautionary note…
1 hour ago
3 comments:
13 million over nearly 60 years...is that right? Being very loose with numbers it would mean net immigration has been the same as organic growth for the last decade (200,000 a year)
SO, yup, net immigration of foreigners was about 200,000 a year since the late 1990s (and net emigration of Brits was 75,000 a year), I covered that here.
But organic growth (after deducting net emigration of Brits) must have slowed at the same time, as there is no obvious upwards tick in the overall growth rate.
Good one
Who cares anyway. People doing work produce things.
The more people the more work the more wages.
The higher the pay, the more produced still.
Evidence? The panorama of history.
Trouble is standard economic theory refutes these observed facts. It says that the planet cannot support a growing population.
Post a Comment