Britain nears demographic turning point as deaths overtake births

MANCHESTER, England (CN) — Britain is expected to record more deaths than births every year starting in 2026, ending natural population growth for the first time in modern history and deepening pressure on politicians promising to curb immigration while maintaining the workforce.

Office for National Statistics projections released April 28 show the U.K. population will still grow, reaching 71 million by 2034, but at a slower pace increasingly driven by migration as fertility falls and the population ages.

Between mid-2024 and mid-2034, the statistics agency projects 6.4 million births and 6.9 million deaths, leaving deaths outnumbering births by nearly half a million people.

Over the same period, 7.3 million people are expected to immigrate to Britain long term while 5.1 million people emigrate, adding about 2.2 million people to the population.

This marks a demographic turning point for Britain and raises questions about how governments will pay for pensions and healthcare as the population ages and fewer working-age adults support more retirees.

"The impact is both on growth and the public finances: slower or negative labor force growth reduces output, while it also reduces tax revenues at the same time as an aging population increases spending on pensions and health," economist Jonathan Portes said. "Most of health spending now is on older people."

The ONS stressed its figures are projections, not forecasts, and said actual numbers could differ depending on future birth rates, mortality and migration.

Still, the direction of travel is declining fertility, leading to fewer children in the coming decade as pensioners become the fastest-growing age group.

By 2034, pensioners are expected to make up about one-fifth of the population.

The number of children is projected to fall by 1.6 million while the working-age population increases by 1.5 million, slower than the projected rise of 1.8 million pensioners.

In December 2025, the unelected upper chamber of the U.K. Parliament, the House of Lords, warned younger generations would bear the cost of successive governments failing to adapt to an aging society.

The committee found measures such as raising the state pension age or increasing immigration would not solve demographic pressures on their own.

Portes said Britain would need several approaches at once, including policies to boost productivity, delay the age of retirement, increase workforce participation and immigration.

"None is likely to be sufficient on its own," he said. "Immigration can't offset population aging, but it can smooth the demographic transition."

He added that without immigration, Britain's workforce "would have shrunk rapidly over the last few years."

That presents a political challenge for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government, which has pledged to reduce immigration, echoing promises made by the previous Conservative government and pressure from Reform UK, the right-wing anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage.

Under Labour, net migration to the U.K., the difference between people arriving and leaving the country, dropped 69% in the year ending June 2025, from 649,000 to 204,000.

Net migration peaked at nearly 1 million in 2023.

Despite the sharp reduction, it failed to prevent Reform gaining thousands of local council seats over the past couple of years, riding a wave of anti-immigration sentiment among certain sections of voters.

The ONS expects net migration to add 2.2 million people to Britain's population between 2024 and 2034, far less than previously forecast.

A Home Office spokesperson said the government wanted to reduce migration further.

"While these projections do not directly take into account recent policy changes, we must go further to reduce the levels of migration," the spokesperson said. "That's why we are introducing sweeping reforms to our immigration system, ending over-reliance on cheap labor whilst attracting the brightest and the best to the U.K."

Polling by the ONS suggests immigration is not the public's top concern.

In April, 90% of respondents said the cost of living was the most common issue facing Britain, followed by the National Health Service at 80% and the economy at 74%.

Only people over 70 ranked immigration among their top three concerns.

While immigration may be part of the solution, migration experts caution against treating immigration as a cure for an aging population.

"Although ONS population projections suggest that the U.K. population would decline without international migration, this does not mean that migration is the answer to the challenges created by an aging population," Ben Brindle, a researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said.

"The main challenge is a fiscal one: As the population gets older, spending on pensions and healthcare increases, while the share of working-age taxpayers declines," Brindle said.

Research suggests migration's long-term effect on public finances is relatively small, he added.

As older workers retire, Britain could fill labor shortages through training, automation and later retirement as well as migration, Brindle said.

The public has mixed feelings on what the demographic shift means.

Ann from Salford said she was unsurprised by falling birth rates, posting on social media that "so many things put young people off having families."

Ellie blamed the cost-of-living crisis for the numbers, saying, "people can't afford to live, let alone have children."

Alan from Manchester believes slower population growth could ease pressure on housing and public services. "A population drop would not be a bad thing in my opinion," he said.

The demographic shift leaves Britain facing a question politicians from most parties have struggled to answer: how to support an aging population and shrinking birthrate while promising voters lower immigration.

ONS projections suggest the country's population will peak in the 2050s before beginning a long decline.

Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is based in England.