A Lords committee has warned that the UK is “woefully underprepared” for the social and economic challenges of an ageing society, according to a BBC news report last week.
Drawing on figures from the Office for National Statistics, the committee predicted “a series of crises” in public service provisions.
If current trends continue, then between 2010 and 2030 there will be a 50% rise in the number of over-65s while the number of over-85s will double. Since this is not being balanced by a rise in Britain’s younger population, officials are concerned that we could be accelerating into a situation where we are unable to offer proper care to the elderly.
“As a country we are not ready for the rapid ageing of our population,” said Lord Filkin, the Labour peer who chaired the committee. “Our population is older now and will get more so over the next decade. The public are entitled to an honest conversation about the implications,” he said.
Baroness Greengross, chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK and a crossbench member of the House of Lords, expressed similar concerns: “Our society is in denial of the inevitability of ageing. We have put off the difficult decisions for far too long.”
Underlying Issues
There are a number of reasons for this demographic shift, including the fact that improved medicine allows people to live longer. That is not a problem and should be treated as a blessing. The real problem, which is not being addressed in any of this discussion, is that we are not having enough children.
Over the years Christian Voice has drawn attention to some of the underlying causes of the declining birth rate. This includes economic policies that have made it increasingly difficult for parents to support children. Despite benefits available to struggling parents, the cumulative effect of the debt-spending required to sustain our welfare state has resulted in a decrease in the purchasing power of the pound. The devaluing of the currency has made it increasingly difficult for parents to support more than a couple children, if even that. Even middle class families are finding it increasingly difficult to bring up their children because of crippling taxation.
Christian Voice has also frequently drawn attention to the many social programs that implicitly discourage marriage. (See our article from last year ‘The Cost of a Permissive Society.’)
Another factor in the declining birth rate has been the contraceptive mentality. This mentality is being promoted by the population control lobby, which often makes potential parents feel guilty for such things as ‘irresponsible breeding.’ (See my article, ‘Baby Freeze: is population control the new solution to global warming?’ and ‘Fourth Child Furore’.)
Another key factor has been the way business and feminism have worked together in a pincer movement to drive women into the work place. As a result, many women are waiting until later in life to have children, only to find that their biological clock has stopped ticking.
Only the Muslims are doing what their bodies were designed to do and having lots of children. However, this is creating its own demographic problem, as we warned in our report ‘Islam Growing at Astronomical Rate in the UK.’
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A major factor must be the difficulty in buying a house. A couple can get good degrees and professional qualifications which give them job opportunities only in London, and still find it impossible to buy a house even after they have had their first baby for fear of the biological clock stopping. Then if the wife stops work for too long, or has a second baby, the chance of buying a house is probably gone for ever.
Of course, for less well qualified parents in London the situation is even worse, There must be many young families now living in hopelessly overcrowded and squalid conditions.
The only decent hope is money from parents (deceased parents who owned a house would be best), or good council accommodation .Very many couples get neither .
Yes, it is tough getting on the ‘housing ladder’. A couple these days needs two wages perhaps because of high taxation and women are caught in a pincer movement between feminism and big business. Remember the time when trades unions fought for the workers (mainly men) to take home a ‘family wage’? Then feminism became fashionable on the left and all that went.
Divorce-on-demand, which splits one household into two, is also a major factor leading to a shortage in the housing stock.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
I know whole streets of very small 19th century houses which once accommodated rather large families but are now devoted mainly to elderly divorced women, sometimes plus a lodger which is useful. But modernised, which they are, they could each house a small family quite well.
Although I don’t quite agree with your attitude to women working, I have heard feminists angrily asking why men ever got a bigger wage in the first place, and that is the reason. It was supposed to be enough to keep a whole family. But not with colour TVs and computers and cars, not even washing machines or fancy food or foreign holidays.
So let me get this straight; you think that women getting abortions is wrong. But now, women who don’t want children and want to avoid unwanted pregnancies are being slammed for ‘contraceptive mentality’. Can’t win, can we ?!
Well, Jane, abortion ends an innocent human being’s life. Tell me, what is that normally called? And if you are a healthy woman and you want the pleasure of conjugal relations without the natural outcome then of course you have to adopt a contraceptive mentality. You aren’t really Jane Glover the conductor, are you?
Ah, so you *do* agree with contraception as a way of avoiding unwanted pregnancies; the wording of your article rather implies the opposite.
Not at all. Today’s contraceptive mentality does not honour God. You have to tell us whether you are the famous Jane Glover, or at least deny it!
If she is Jane Glover the conductor, her life has involved a lot of travelling and it is very creditable to think carefully before creating children who would inevitably be inconvenienced by this at the very least. The decision rests ultimately with her and her partner whether to have children or not, the same as whether Stephen and his wife (if any) decide to have 2 children or 6 .
Hmmm…
‘Decide’ to have children?
Of course having children (or not) is a decision!
Decide? Children are a gift of God. Some things are at his disposal.