A NATION IN NUMBERS

The ups and downs of birth rates

The number of people being born is a fundamentally important statistic – it is, after all, one of the key determinants in the size of the population. The birth rate has generally been on the decline since the turn of the 20th century, not surprising given developments such as the huge fall in the infant mortality rate (15 per cent in 1900; 0.4 per cent in 2018) and the development of reliable contraception.

But this has not been a straight-line decline: the number of births in the UK dipped below a million for the first time in 1915 but, by 1920, had soared back up to 1.1 million, the highest on record. Why the rapid rise? Well, perhaps it was simply the effect of demobilisation bringing couples back together. Or maybe it was a conscious desire to replace the population lost in the war and Spanish flu pandemic.

Birth rates fell again when the country was plunged into war in 1939. However, on this occasion, the