Where did the children go?

Here is another one of those shocking UK demographic trends. There are 2.4 million fewer children today in the UK than back in 1971. Back then, children accounted for 27 percent of the population, now it is just 20 percent.

Like so much of manufacturing, child rearing has been downsized. We have substituted the population shortfall by importing people from overseas. Before you dismiss this idea as woefully simplistic, child production is powerfully influenced by cost considerations. The cost of having a child in the UK has increased dramatically. Thus it would appear that UK residents have substituted children for leisure and other consumption goods.

Or to put it another way, if the UK labour force was growing through births as fast as it was in 1971, the available worforce would be much larger. The larger supply would put downward pressure on wages, and would therefore discourage foreign workers from moving over here. There would also be more indigenously produced workers to do the crap jobs now down by immigrants.

The conclusion is a difficult one for the racists. UK families have chosen to have fewer children and have more plasma TVs. It has outsourced the difficult task of producing additional workers to Eastern Europe.