Everyone seems to blame immigration for the rise in population numbers whilst ignoring another very significant factor. We are all living longer and so long as we keep doing so there will be more of us to count, all other things being equal. It is expected that whilst the rate of improvement will decline somewhat it is still going to rise.

So unless you propose to introduce a compulsory cap on life expectancy, or to deport people when they get old, the population is going to increase. Reducing birth rates even further might stablise the numbers but we would end up with even less working age people and even more elderly needing support, which won't be there.

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For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

I mentioned the falling birthrate and its impact on the need for immigration. It is certainly a factor but it was the often overlooked fact of our increased longevity on population size that I was discussing. Birthrate decline seems to be more recognised.

Your remark about this affecting men more is puzzling. In my day it took both a man and a woman to make a baby but who knows in today's world.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

is it permissible to comment on a higher rate of fertility in Bradford than Clapham ? And a heck of a difference in rates of longterm unemployment, average earnings and average house prices.

which town puts more taxes back into the Exchequer ? which town purchases more poppies on remembrance Sunday ?

Edited by PalazioVecchio (03 Jun 2023 8.06pm)

Eze Peasy at Anfield....

interesting, by Laura Kuenssberg for the BBC.
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Paraphrased
"If you were given a fiver every time a government minister parroted the slogan that promises to end migrant channel crossings you would be pretty flush by now.

You know the one.

It's branded on government lecterns, on the backdrop behind the prime minister when he gives speeches, it's all over social media, and the methods the government wants to use are in a big set of new laws making their way through Parliament.
So, I have spoken to five former home secretaries, Conservative and Labour, about why it is just so hard to manage the numbers of people who want to come to the UK.
And repeatedly promising the public that the numbers will fall makes it hard for ministers to admit that the immigration system is now, ironically after Brexit, more liberal than it was before.

One of the former home secretaries said the numbers are "sky high because of deliberate Tory policy". (BBC website)

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

We have already established that you don't understand population trends.

You don't have to keep proving it.

I think you need to learn to read. What I wrote was not about population trends per se but about the lack of attention to the contribution that increasing longevity makes to them.

Overall population trends are complex issues with several contributing factors. The fall in the birthrate, well below replacement levels, is an important one, but it is already so low that any further fall cannot impact it much more. Mortality rates though are going to continue to improve, albeit at a lower rate than in the last decades. Common sense dictates that these two things alone must end with an increasing number of people living here, unless some of them leave.

That's without any contribution from immigration, and that was the point I was making. If everything else remains equal, and of course it won't, an increaing number of elderly people and a lower number of young people cannot keep our economy running at the level we have come to rely on. Plugging the gap with immigration is the only realistic answer.

It's not a question of liking or disliking it. It's only a question of realism.

Our world is changing fast and we have no choice other than to change with it. Whilst our mortality improvements will slow, better health care will impact those in the developing world significantly. Combine that with the impacts of climate change and we need to be ready for more change than any of us can imagine.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.