The world's central bankers rarely say something that I agree with, but they have during this year's Jackson Hole gathering of the heads of such banks. As the FT reports:
The world's largest economies will lack the workers they need to power growth and keep prices stable in the coming decades unless they attract more foreigners, top central bankers warned.
Speaking at an annual gathering of leading policymakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the heads of the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and Bank of England all sought to highlight the challenge to economic growth posed by ageing populations.
There is only one thing to say about this, and that is that they are right.
We need inward migration. There really is no debate to be had about that. But there is a lot of education to do.
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If housing was more affordable, families would probably be bigger and reduce the need for immigration.
Those politicians who are most against immigration are from the same belief system as those who are responsible for those high property prices.
Few seem to make the connection.
I am not sure it is just housing affordability, although that might be an issue.
There are also issues about the affordability of children.
Agreed but if our politics was run in the way you advocate -and with which I agree-it would be more family friendly.
True.
But you have to ask whether people want children.
I think they fundamentally linked ..
The need for inward immigration is a complex issue. There is no doubt it is needed short term, though the level required is debatable.
The assumption is that the country can’t have a falling population. I doubt that core assumption, but let’s go with it for the moment. The problem is that inward immigration does not solve that issue. That’s because immigrants tend towards the,low, fertility rate of this country. So a constant flow of immigrants would be required to stabilise the population.
The real problem, if we want a stable population is that it is too difficult and too expensive to raise children in this country. Young people have to contend with high house prices, student loans, high childcare costs and a precarious job market for young people. The solution is to make child rearing affordable. This is made difficult by the high level of inequality in our society.
But I do question whether we need a stable population and whether it cannot be allowed to decline. The narrative is that we need young people to produce for and care for the old people in our society. But that conclusion relies on untenable assumptions. It assumes that we need a constant number of young to produce food and products for the unproductive elderly. In centuries past nearly everyone worked in agriculture to feed the population. Today it is only a few percent. Then we needed large numbers for manufacturing. But this is increasing automated with fewer and fewer people needed. Then we need people for knowledge work. But this will be reduced by AI. And finally we need carers for the infirm elderly. But that’s a council of despair. People are leading longer healthier lives with less need for care. We could do so much much more with better healthcare. And with preventative care this could be much more efficient than at present.
So do we really need a stable population long term. I think not. And, if we don’t, there is a debate to be had about the size of the population we want in this country.
We can have a declining population, but only if we cull the elderly. That’s the reality of where we are. You are wrong Tim, most especially when it comes to care, where you are hopelessly wrong. Either write reasoned comment here, or don’t do so at all. And whilst you are at it, read about the fundamental pension contract. But don’t waste anyone’s time with stuff like this.
You are just so arrogant ! You just claim that Tim is ‘wrong’ (in fact, not just wrong but ‘hopelessly wrong’) yet you provide no evidence to support that claim.
It’s just your opinion, as a casual observer, which has no more weight than any other casual observer. Why do you think your view is somehow worth more, yet has no evidence to support it?
23,000 blog posts.
I have never provided any evidence to support my opinions, at all, ever, obviously.
Why haven’t you read them before also writing drivel?
I think that is a bit of a harsh response, Richard. Most of Eastern Europe already has falling populations, as does Japan. By 2100 everywhere other than Africa is predicted to have falling populations. There is not likely to be a ready source of immigrants as a result. A falling population is certainly difficult to manage and not something we are used to, but I think we will have to deal with it.
You are ignoring climate change, Tim. When a billion or two need to move I think I can safely say there will be plenty of people heading our way. Migration has not begun as yet.
And Tim’s assumptions, like improving healthcare in old age when it is clear neoliberal diets and living are producing rapidly extending periods of serious ill health from what we now call middle age onwards are just nonsense. Sorry, but I will nit be backing down.
Thank you for allowing me to post a comment despite your vehement disagreement. 🙂
I just think your assumptions do not stack, and you did not justify your claims. Sorry.
You may be being just a teensy bit unfair to Tim. He has at least identified some of the assumptions made about whether or not a falling population is a “good” or a “bad” thing. The usual argument is based on a society’s age profile and what we need to do to keep recreating the sort of society we already have, either by getting women to have more children or failing that, by poaching able-bodied and qualified people from overseas where the need for them might be greater. I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I feel certain we need to be encouraging our thinking to leave the box.
I have looked outside the box
If we want to provide for the elderly I have found one thing: we need more inward migration.
“Thinking outside the box” means questioning whether “the elderly” is a clear category of people that ultimately needs the sort of help that we already have and that you are suggesting we need more of. We might acknowledge that towards the end of life, we’re going to need the support of paid help because we live in atomised family units that are geographically dispersed, but before that point are any number of possible ways of organising our lives, especially if we are provided with enough income. China has a developing policy of “younger-seniors-based elderly care”, for example, because everywhere the young-old are actually extremely busy doing varieties of unpaid work for grandchildren, children and often parents or older neighbours. So it already happens here, but it’s non-structured and largely unfunded. I say all this not to be difficult, but because there is a danger that seeing “the elderly” as a non-productive group that is a drain on society’s resources is a sure road to culling policies of one kind or another, and certainly to the disempowerment of older citizens. I’m also concerned that since all societies, unless riven by war and famine, have a growing number of very old, relying on inward migration is a kind of theft and not a long term solution. You may not see this as part of your debate, but we do need to ask these questions too.
There is a lot about this comment that makes me feel quite uneasy. I am letting it go for now, but am keeping a wary eye. We do need to ask questions, but I am not at all sure we would be asking the same ones. Tell me what yours are.
Uneasy!? Interesting! Sometimes mentioning China (or Russia) can produce that effect. Some of my questions clearly circle around ageism as a form of discrimination – the dangerous “othering” of old people – but for the moment let’s focus on quality of life in old age and how we might live out our sunset years with hope and creativity. I personally do not want to end my life in the clutches of big corporate care homes and privately-contracted NHS entities. I suspect I can’t be alone in that. Thus the need to explore other ways of living. I was thinking more medieval beguinage than institution, perhaps without the gender bar and religious requirement. A kind of “living apart together” cooperative for older people where a self-governing community lives to certain principles and commitments that include mutual care. A limited form of this has existed for some time. My aunt is 100 and lives alone in a corporately-run retirement complex where people own or rent their flats and there are some shared facilities. Those who live there do help and support each other – but that’s out of goodwill, and there is no concrete expectation or guarantee of such support. More pioneering, however, are existing communities set up primarily for the purposes of mutual support. This weekend I was reading in the iNews about such a development for women without children, of mixed ages from late 50s to early seventies. The initial barriers to this were enormous. It took EIGHTEEN YEARS to find the properties, sort out planning legalities and get things functional. But if such alternatives were taken seriously, received recognition, publicity and public funding, and were available as of right, regardless of income, and there was sufficient community medical support, we could do things differently. I haven’t done the sums, of course, but there must be quite a few cost savings as well as outlay. And we could usefully have a look at how other countries are doing this – and not just western ones.
Thanks. You have provided a clarification which would have been hard to to work out from what you initially wrote, and as a new commentator on a site where trolling is commonplace I have a right to say I post a comment with unease when initial meaning is not clear, as I did not think it was. Thank you for making clear what it was.
Thank you. I don’t envy you, Richard, trying to keep abreast of trolls and the like. And of course you have a right NOT to post stuff, too. In my case, I felt you’d done absolutely the right thing by asking me to clarify, and I hope this will apply to others, despite the outcome being that you have to trawl through endless ramblings like this.
Thanks, Ruth. Appreciated.
How short is short-term?
In the 50s and 60s I was brought up in a big Edwardian house.
We always had lodgers, usually West Indian, who worked in the NHS with my mother, or were bus drivers like my dad.
In the 20 years after I left home they would have immigrants living in the house, often students then.
That seems long-term to me.
My sisters and and I are all the better for it.
Last week I visited a relative in a care home in North Wales. She had fallen at home and with no one else to care for her the extended family arranged for her future needs. One of her main complaints was that there were so many ‘foreigners’ working as care staff there…. the ones we saw seemed as ‘caring’ as was possible, albeit their English was accented. We stayed at a hotel just two miles away and during our evening meal I noticed that all the staff–late teens, early twenties- were local. I wondered why THEY were not working at the Care Home, looking after their elderly/frail neighbours ,rather than catering to the relatively trivial needs of us visitors? No doubt this scenario is replicated across the country.?
Care work is much more demanding and stressful, and also just dirty.
Dirtier than what?
Carers wages are usually low. You can earn more working at a supermarket!
In 2023, the total fertility rate in England and Wales dropped to 1.44 children per woman, the lowest on record. The UK overall is at ~1.42. That’s far below the replacement rate of 2.1, needed to sustain the population without migration.
While 2024 saw a slight uptick with 594,677 live births in England and Wales, this remains among the lowest annual totals since records began in the 1970s.
So, not opinion – basic arithmetic, we need to find ~300,000 babies a year from somewhere. Native births, immigration or a mixture of the two. I personally don’t care which option you choose but you gotta pick one! You can have a declining population but that will mean a shrinking working-age population alongside a growing proportion of elderly people, many of whom will need care. Again, not opinion – basic arithmetic. As Richard states this would require a cull of the elderly, either by allowing standards of healthcare and support to decline, leaving older people to suffer neglect and early death, or adopting even more unthinkable measures that no civilised society should consider. Hopefully, we can all agree that neither path is acceptable.
So, do women just not want children anymore?
• New Social Covenant Unit poll (2021): Over 92% of young women want to become mothers, with an average ideal of ~2.35 children.
• Southampton/ESRC research: Between 1991–2007, women intended to have 2.0–2.16 children but had 0.3–0.4 fewer on average.
• Beaujouan & Berghammer (2019): The UK fertility gap is around 0.3 children per woman, i.e. for every three children they want, they actually only have two.
Seems they do but cite, finances, career and suitability of partners as constraints.
So, if you don’t want immigration, you need to change the policy environment such that women feel able to commit to having more children. That policy environment has given us precarity, lack of affordable housing, low wages, high cost of living, lack of affordable childcare and general insecurity.
the cull has already begun…….assisted dying, insouciance about the likelihood of further epidemics which hit the elderly hard, refusal to do anything about global burning which intensely affects us oldies, the running down of the Health Service, the privatisation of care homes (more dangerous now than when they were mainly run by the council……JS (aged 79)
Agreed.
We really do need to look at “work” in a different way. There is a tremendous amount of unpaid work carried out in society that does not appear in official figures. Apart from the possibly better-understood unpaid work carried out by women in the home and in raising children, there is also a huge amount of unpaid work carried out by the so-called “elderly”, both in terms of looking after grandchildren thus liberating younger people for paid work, and in terms of looking after the infirm and the very old within their homes. I’m not sure how we can work out how many people we require to do what is needed in society if we have no real idea about what work is actually being carried out, how it’s being carried out, and by whom.
But why would anyone want to come here unless desperate? Just look at a few article headlines in today’s Observer (a newspaper that is rapidly becoming thinner than a sheet of toilet paper): ‘Communities split, families divided: how Epping lit the fuse on migrant hotels crisis’. It does not address whether there is any such ‘crisis’ and, if there is, what is the nature of the crisis? Surely the growing issues of not having enough willing Brits to wipe our arses as we age and fund our pensions are truly crises in the making. But do we hear anything from Farage about this. I single out Farage because he has been the Vandal in Chief for far too long. Is it any surprise that another article in the paper is about him pocketing £280,000 for promotional ads for a gold bullion trading company speaks volumes. Will the BBC and its co-conspirators in the MSM ever challenge this wretched man (who portrays himself as speaking for the common man) about this? Surely this is a prime example of the crisis in the political class? This is exemplified by another headline ‘Take tougher line on asylum rights, judges told’. It illustrates perfectly the burgeoning authoritarianism of most members of our current political class.
Much to agree with.
My partner’s parents came here from the Caribbean in the 1960s with their parents for a better life. After years of struggle, they mostly achieved it, although some of the family are still affected by the trauma of growing up in two rooms in an unhospitable country.
Sadly we seem to be regressing rather than progressing.
I have said to my partner, who works in the NHS, that if everyone whose grandparents weren’t born here took a day off work at the same time there would be chaos.
And you are right
https://labourhub.org.uk/2025/08/24/help-palestinian-students-reach-uk-universities/
Note the difference between Ukrainian and Palestinian would-be migrants.
The fact is, as you have noted in a comment above, that migration has not really even started yet and that climate is going to drive a level of inward migration well beyond the imaginings of most of our politicians and public.
The sad accompanying fact is that, because of prejudice, economic ignorance and greed, when the real migration does arrive, we are not going to be in a position to capitalise on it and leverage it to help us mitigate the worst effects of climate change, (and partial mitigation will be our only option). Instead, unless we make radical social, political and economic changes, which I find unlikely given our current political “leadership”, the great likelihood is that it is going to exacerbate our social and existential problems.
That is my fear as well.
I am confused. Is it the case that it is not possible to educate British people currently in school up to the level where they are competent to take the jobs on the horizon?
If that is why it’s necessary to foster in-migration, we must be assuming that the in-migrants will be up to speed on the job requirements?
Please note I have no position on in-migration, and British policy is none of my American business. I’m just trying to understand the situation on the ground. My position is we are all in this together, on this planet.
There is a massive problem with employers saying current school leavers and graduates in the UK lack many of the basic skills required to undertake basic work activities. I can confirm that there is far too little focus on basic numeracy and literacy skills, for example. I see this at graduate level, for example.
For anyone planning a BBQ on Bank Holiday Monday, how about trying out this recipe:
“The British
Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
Vietnamese and Sudanese.
Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians
And Pakistanis,
Combine with some Guyanese
And turn up the heat.
Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians,
Iraqis and Bangladeshis together with some
Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese
And Palestinians
Then add to the melting pot.
Leave the ingredients to simmer.
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish
Binding them together with English
Allow time to be cool.
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,
Serve with justice
And enjoy.
Note: All the ingredients are equally important.
Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste.
Warning: An unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain.
Give justice and equality to all.”
The late and sorely missed Benjamin Zephaniah who was proud of both his Caribbean roots and his hometown Birmingham. We need more of his type and less of Farage et al.
Very good.
Doesn’t sound very appetising to me. Surely it is possible to feel that the English are a people with some continuity and a relationship with the place we call England? The English language is about 40% French …all of Latin.. and is unrecognisable from its Germanic roots. Nonetheless it remains a discrete interwoven whole, and those people who worried about its coherence were not baddies.
Same with the English people, some of whom fear change is being forced on them at an unreasonable rate ( from raisonable: old French).
Forced?
Who is forcing what?
And what are people frightened of when we have always had immigration?
Or are you just offering an old excuse for racism?
YES!
Indeed, “the late and sorely missed Benjamin Zephaniah”.
I have always thought that the intentional underfunding of communities,lack of decent housing, underfunding of schools and ever reducing provision in the NHS has led to the perfect storm which is evident in so many areas and produces this flag waving jingoism .I have a slogan for this : Corporations will kill us Migrants won’t.
Correct
From the American perspective, there is evidence to suggest that immigration won’t be opposed per se, so long as the immigration happens through “legal” human trafficking — that is, the third party labor companies corporations call up when they want cheap work. So no pathway to citizenship; legal documentation withheld from laborers to give employers all the leverage; unsafe working conditions; child labor; etc. And naturally, Dear Leader gets a cut of all proceeds. Decreased risk for state instability, maximum corruption and exploitation. By comparison, slavery was expensive.
The situation is very different here in a great many ways – including ‘undocumented work’ being very difficult to get.
I truly hope this model remains an American one (what a thing to hope for) and is not exported elsewhere. I have heard concerning reports from Germany and Eastern Europe, and it is difficult to tell from here whether those are isolated instances.
How the population is distributed may be one thing, but surely for the sake of the survival of the planet we do need a falling population. This Earth cannot sustain billions more people and with them the loss of many of the rest of the creatures that also live on earth that are vital to its sustainability and health.
We can feed everyone if we want to.
Who are you culling?
Where am I suggesting a culling !! I was saying that continual population growth is not sustainable on an earth with climate change. Whether it ever was may be debatable but as more and more of earth becomes uninhabitable for humans and the traditional food that they grow more and more growth is not feasible. Who do you want to die through starvation and disease?
I asked you – who do you want to die? – because we are still capable of feeding everyone – we are doing so – so why are you suggesting otherwise? What choice are you suggesting? It is a serious question. You said we must cut population. Where are you going to start? If you think we must do so, you cannot avoid the question of selection
“We can feed everyone if we want to.”
Maybe for now, but for how much longer? Or is your ‘we” limited to the people of the UK / Western Europe?
And in the future? From 2 articles in the Guardian today:
“Shoppers are already feeling the effects, as droughts in Spain, Italy and Portugal, where the UK sources much of its fresh fruit and vegetables during autumn and winter, push up prices this summer, at a time when prices would usually fall.
This summer even farmers in parts of the UK have been hit by long dry spells affecting production of cereals, potatoes, carrots and broccoli, which are not usually irrigated.
Things are expected to get far worse as a result of the climate crisis. In the EU, the average annual loss for crops is forecast to increase by up to two-thirds by 2050 to as much as €24.8bn, according to analysis by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission”
“The World Bank forecasts for gradual climate migration did not include estimates for Malawi. But during a devastating drought last year, 400,000 people moved within the country, according to IOM data.
Average temperatures in Malawi between 2015 and 2024 were 0.63 degrees higher than a century earlier, the World Bank data says. The rising population is also adding pressure – Malawi’s population has more than doubled to 21.6 million in 30 years.”
I know all this. I have been aware f the risks of this for 50 years. I co-founded the Green New Deal because I know of this. But what I want you to tell me is not that we have a problem – because that solves nothing – but who you want to cull first since you seem to think that is necessary.
I don’t. I think we change resource alocation, how we eat, what we eat.
I think we can sustain populations if we do – most especially cutting out the vast waste of UPF – which includes the massive over consumption it deliberately encourages, as well as the waste it creates.
You disagree. So tell me what your plan is, please.
I don’t think AliB was advocating ‘culling’, just the control of the expanding number of people on this planet. This is obviously happening by individual’s control of their reproductive rate, not only in this country but many others where this is possible. It is not just housing -or the lack of it- that motivates people to have, or have-not children, but many other factors are involved, not all of them quantified by an economist’s spreadsheet.
I am, obviously, and aware that this is happening, and in a great many countries, excepting in Africa, but that was not the framing that was used and that is why I raised the point, and might do so again during the course of this week in blogs that I might post.
I really don’t understand how you have interpreted my comment as a wish/ need to kill people. The population of Europe, Japan etc have of their own volition started on an individual decision basis to reduce their population. You appeared to be saying that this is a bad thing. All I was trying to say was that on a global basis we cannot sustain an ever growing population. We, as in the world, need to learn how to manage a declining population. Why are you intent on reading into what I wrote something completely different?
Because I believed, and still do as you have repeated it, that you were saying we must cut population.
My question remains, who must cut, how, and with what consequence then? If you think we must, this is fair.
It also feeds into my question on migration because it raises the issue that if some populations are cutting and others are not, what happens then? I really cannot see why asking that is unfair if you think we must cut population. If an opinion has profound consequences why not ask for its justification?
To repeat, people in Europe, Japan etc are CHOSING to have fewer children such that the population is not being replaced. Obviously there are a whole range of reasons why they are making that choice, some of which could be said to be a forced and unwanted choice. I note your CPchat article on what actions need to be taken to address food production in an era of climate change and that in theory it should be possible to feed the world population if such actions were taken. I remain profoundly pessimistic that such action and in sufficient quantities will be taken. I also note that the question did not include what impact such actions would have on other life on Earth.
I do NOT want to cull people, but neither do I see why this human population must keep growing in perpetuity.
I might ask why do you want to cull numerous creatures and plants and keep covering an ever larger percentage of Earth with concrete as that is what will happen if the world’s population keeps growing forever.
I would also add that on historical evidence humans can’t seem to stop developing ever more sophisticated weapons and using them to kill. We are likely to have even more wars as climate action accelerates and with insufficient action on trying to manage food production. As I do not want to cull people it is not a future I want.
I would ask that when I have said I did not mean to imply or want to cull people that you have the decency to accept that and not continue to accuse me of something that is not true.
This is getting a little tedious because you refuse to accept the consequences of your own assumptions whilst making claims about what I am saying which are wholly untrue.
Firstly, micro examples are not of use here. You are persisting in using them the fact that in many countries population might fall is beside the point when in macro terms it is rising. We are discussing migration. We are not therefore talking about overall falling populations, whether we like it or not: we are talking about growing populations and where they might live. You do not seem to wish to address that fact.
Secondly, I have at no point said I want to grow population. I would be entirely happy if the world’s population stabilised, and even began to fall very slightly, but the point I am making, continually, is that because we happen to divide the world population into countries, with each broadly speaking having their own social convention about how they will provide for their elderly, and so we have to ensure that the management of this decline is even spread. You appear to be refusing to accept that, hence my point is that you are not Addressing the real issue, but in practice are turning a blind eye to the potential consequences of what you are suggesting.
So, what is your plan? You want declining population. I think I have interpreted you correctly. All I’ve asked you to do is explain how you think this goal can be achieved without cutting population, and so far you have refused to answer. That is my frustration. I think it a reasonable frustration, and at the same time, please do not make up what I have not said.
It is frustrating when people make up what you say isn’t it.
Ironic that in attempts to ensure there is food for the growing world population the effect is to – using your word- cull some of the population- but at least it is “over there” so we don’t have to notice.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds
Yes, in a word.
And I can get bored.