The UK’s total fertility rate is 1.82, way below replacement rate of 2.1. Our population is shrinking. Not so fast as in some other European countries, though, where the overall rate is 1.59. Today’s average household size in the UK is 2.3 persons. 50 years ago it was 5. Ask around to find out why […]
Childbirth
I asked my mother – born in 1908 – why there were so few women in public life and she replied: ‘because they spend so much time combing their hair and looking in mirrors.’ I asked my father, a doctor – born in 1889 – and he replied: ‘because they have a space in their […]
Hans Rosling of the BCC’s statistical team tells us we don’t have to panic – world population is levelling out, and will stabilise at about 11 billion. The size of the average family the world over is now 2.5 children, as the news spreads that the larger the family, the poorer and lower life expectancy. […]
This is the title of a story I once wrote (back in 2001 when such things were just a gleam in a geneticist’s eye.) Do it, do it! I cried then, even as I quaver now: it can be done, and is being done. If you’re a fertile young woman, and any employer is offering […]