16-05-2025
Britain is squeezing its population out of existence
This week, The Telegraph will be publishing a series of essays from experts on the demographic crisis facing much of the world, with falling birth rates and ageing populations seen across many regions. A list of published articles can be found below this one.
Imagine, briefly, that the Government proposed putting a chemical in the water. The chemical would have marvellous health effects for children, saving roughly 57 lives each year. At the same time, it would damage adults' fertility, leaving parents able to conceive 8,000 fewer children each year.
My guess is that most people would make a clear and obvious choice – we should give the 8,000 children a chance to be born, and their parents a chance to meet them. Any government that tried to pass such a regulation would be met with uproar.
Fortunately, there is no such chemical in your taps. But the idea isn't as hypothetical as you would think. It's just that rather than mandating something in the water, American states mandated something in their cars. Specifically, child car-seats.
Over the past 50 years, well-meaning legislators have steadily raised the age at which children need to sit in special seats when travelling in cars.
While it may sound sensible, the policy presents practical problems. In a standard car, fitting three child seats in the back is physically impossible. If you have two children and want to have a third, you either need a larger, more expensive car – or you need to wait until one child is old enough to sit unaided. And as a larger car is more expensive, parents may be forced to opt for the later choice.
The net effect of these laws, according to one study, has been to lower the probability that women who already have two children using car seats have a third child in a given year. The effect size is about 0.7 percentage points. Small but, added across the relevant regions of the United States, significant.
In 2017, the rules prevented around 57 child fatalities, and 8,000 births. In total, since 1980, an estimated 145,000 fewer children have been born in America as a result of these rules.
The car-seat prophylactic is a perfect metaphor for Western attitudes towards birth rates.
Having children is important, sure. And we'd ideally like to have some around to pay taxes in future, sustain the debt, look after us in our old age – and possibly carry the flame of the civilisation passed down to us by several thousand years of our ancestors scraping and scrabbling to build a society from dirt and rocks. But we have other priorities.
