The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country would have throughout their reproductive years. In the United Kingdom in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have five children over the course of their lifetime. Over the next 35 years the fertility rate was quite sporadic, rising to over 5.5 in the 1810s and 1820s, then dropping to 4.9 by 1835. This was during and after the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 with the US, which was a time of increased industrialization, economic depression and high unemployment after the war. As things became more stable, and the 'Pax Britannica' (a period of relative, international peace and economic prosperity for the British Empire) came into full effect, the fertility rate plateaued until 1880, before dropping gradually until the First World War. The fertility rate then jumped from 2.6 to 3.1 children per woman between 1915 and 1920, as many men returned from the war. It then resumed it's previous trajectory in the interwar years, before increasing yet again after the war (albeit, for a much longer time than after WWI), in what is known as the 'Baby Boom'. Like the US, the Baby Boom lasted until around 1980, where it then fell to 1.7 children per woman, and it has remained around this number (between 1.66 and 1.87) since then.

In 2021 the live birth rate of the United Kingdom fell to 10.4 births per 1,000 population, the lowest it had been during this time period. The UK's birth rate has been declining steadily since 2010 when the birth rate was 12.9 births per 1,000 population. After 1938, the year with the highest birth rate in the UK was 1947, when the crude birth rate was 21.2 births per 1,000 population. Under two children per mother in 2021 The most recent crude live birth rate for this statistic is based on the 694,685 births, that occurred in 2021 as well as the mid-year population estimate of 67 million for the United Kingdom. It has a close relation to the fertility rate which estimates the average number of children women are expected to have in their lifetime, which was 1.53 in this reporting year. Among the constituent countries of the UK, Northern Ireland had the highest birth rate at 11.6, followed by England at 10.5, Wales at 9.3, and Scotland at 8.7. International comparisons The UK is not alone in seeing its birth and fertility rates decline dramatically in recent decades. Across the globe, fertility rates have fallen noticeably since the 1960s, with the fertility rate for Asia, Europe, and the Americas being below two in 2021. As of this year, the global fertility rate was 2.31, and was by far the highest in Africa, which had a fertility rate of 4.12, although this too has fallen from a high of 6.72 in the late 1960s. A reduction in infant mortality, as well as better access to contraception, are factors that have typically influenced declining fertility rates recently.

Historical dataset showing U.K. fertility rate by year from 1950 to 2025.

Between 1939 and 1950, the Soviet Union's fertility rate underwent the most drastic change of all the major Allied Powers; falling from 4.9 births per woman in 1939 to just 1.7 births in 1943. In Russia alone, this decline was even greater, falling from 4.9 to 1.3 births in the same time period. After the war's conclusion in 1945, there was an observable increase in fertility in all the given countries, and this marked beginning of the global baby boom of the mid-twentieth century.

In the United Kingdom, the crude birth rate in 1800 was 37 live births per thousand people, meaning that 3.7 percent of the population had been born in that year. From 1800 until 1830, the crude birth rate jumped between 35 and 45, before plateauing between 35 and 37 until the 1880s. From 1880 until the Second World War, the crude birth rate dropped to just under fifteen births per one thousand people, with the only increase coming directly after World War One. After WWII, the United Kingdom experienced a baby boom, as many soldiers returned home and the economy recovered, however this boom stopped in the late 1960s and the crude birth rate went into decline again. From the late 1970s until today, the crude birth rate has remained between eleven and fourteen, and is expected to be 11.5 in 2020.

Live births and stillbirths annual summary statistics, by sex, age of mother, whether within marriage or civil partnership, percentage of non-UK-born mothers, birth rates and births by month and mothers' area of usual residence.

Among nations of the UK, Northern Ireland had the highest number of live births per 1,000 in 2021, at 11.6, followed by England at 10.5, Wales at 9.3, and Scotland at 8.7. The crude birth has fallen for all nations of the UK when compared with 1971, while Northern Ireland has consistently had the highest number of live births per 1,000 people. Long-term birth trends After reaching a postwar peak of 18.8 births per 1,000 people, the UK's crude birth rate has declined considerably, falling to a low of just 11 births per 1,000 people in 2020. In that year, there were just 681,560 live births, compared with over one million in 1964. Additionally, the average age of mothers in the UK has been steadily increasing since the mid-1970s. In 1975, for example, the average age at which mothers gave birth was 26.4 years, compared with 30.9 in 2021. Millennials overtake Boomers as largest generation Due to the large number of births that happened in the years following the Second World War, the generation born during this time were called Baby Boomers, and until 2020 were the largest generation in the UK. Since that year, the Millennial generation, born between 1981 and 1996 have been the largest generational cohort. In 2022, there were approximately 14.48 million Millennials, 14.14 million Generation X members (born between 1965 and 1980) and around 13.8 million Baby Boomers. Generation Z, the generation immediately after Millennials, numbered approximately 12.9 million in 2022.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In Germany in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have 5.4 children over the course of their lifetime. It remained around this number until the late 1820s, when it then dropped to just under five, which was a long-term effect of the Napoleonic Period in Europe. From this point until the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's fertility rate was rather sporadic, reaching it's lowest point in 1855 with an average of 4.6 births per woman, and it's highest point in 1875 (just after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871), with an average of 5.4 live births per woman. From the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the Second World War, Germany's fertility rate dropped from around 5 children per woman in 1900, to 1.9 in 1945. The only time where the fertility rate increased was in the inter-war years. Like other countries heavily involved in the Second World War, Germany (both East and West) experienced a Baby Boom from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, however it then dropped to it's lowest point of just 1.3 children per woman by 1995, shortly after the re-unification of Germany. In recent years, Germany's fertility rate has gradually been increasing again, and is expected to reach 1.6 in 2020, its highest rate in over forty years.

There were 694,685 live births recorded in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 681,560 in the previous year. Between 1887 and 2021 the year with the highest number of live births was 1920 when there were approximately 1.13 million births, while the year with the fewest births was 1977, when there were just 657,038 births. Birth rate at a historic low in 2020 At 10.2 births per 1,000 people, the birth rate of the United Kingdom in 2020 was at a historic low. After witnessing a twenty-first century high of 12.9 in 2010, the birth rate gradually declined before a sharp decrease was recorded between 2012 and 2013. Although there was a slight uptick in the birth rate in 2021, when there were 10.4 births per 1,000 people, the total fertility rate reached a low of 1.53 births per woman in the same year. As well as falling birth and fertility rates, the average age of mothers has been increasing. In 1991, the average age of mothers at childbirth was 27.7 years, compared with 30.9 years in 2021. UK population reaches 67 million In 2022, the overall population of the United Kingdom was almost 67.6 million people. Of the four countries that comprise the UK, England has by far the highest population, at 57.1 million, compared with 5.45 million in Scotland, 3.13 million in Wales, and 1.91 million in Northern Ireland. These countries are far less densely populated than England, especially when compared to London, which had approximately 5,630 people per square kilometer, compared with just 70 in Scotland. After London, North West England was the second-most densely populated area of the UK, which includes the large metropolitan areas of the cities of Manchester, and Liverpool

Historic lists of top 100 names for baby boys and girls for 1904 to 1994 at 10-yearly intervals.

The statistic depicts the median age of the population in the United Kingdom from 1950 to 2100*. The median age of a population is an index that divides the population into two equal groups: half of the population is older than the median age and the other half younger. In 2020, the median age of United Kingdom's population was 39.2 years. Population of the United Kingdom The United Kingdom (UK) includes Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland, and is a state located off the coast of continental Europe. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, which means the Queen acts as representative head of state, while laws and constitutional issues are discussed and passed by a parliament. The total UK population figures have been steadily increasing, albeit only slightly, over the last decade; in 2011, the population growth rate was lower than in the previous year for the first time in eight years. Like many other countries, the UK and its economy were severely affected by the economic crisis in 2009. Since then, the unemployment rate has doubled and is only recovering slowly. UK inhabitants tend to move to the cities to find work and better living conditions; urbanization in the United Kingdom has been on the rise. At the same time, population density in the United Kingdom has been increasing due to several factors, for example, the rising number of inhabitants and their life expectancy at birth, an increasing fertility rate, and a very low number of emigrants. In fact, the United Kingdom is now among the 20 countries with the highest life expectancy at birth worldwide. As can be seen above, the median age of UK residents has also been increasing significantly since the seventies; another indicator for a well-working economy and society.

The Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal Databank (AMND) was initiated in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Aberdeen, in 1950, by the late Professor Sir Dugald Baird, in collaboration with the Medical Research Council’s (MRC’s) Medical Sociology Unit. It was originally set up as a resource for the study of the physiology, pathology and sociology of pregnancy, but the usefulness of the AMND has extended significantly beyond this through linkage with other health and social care records as well as intergenerational and family linkages.

The AMND is an invaluable resource for life-course epidemiology, especially since it is one of the earliest and most comprehensive obstetric databases. From the year 1950 to the present, this unique database has been recording all the obstetric and fertility-related events occurring in women residing in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.

Data are collected from every pregnancy event occurring in Aberdeen Maternity Hospital which is part of the National Health Services (NHS) Grampian.

Aberdeen Maternity Hospital is the only maternity hospital in the city of Aberdeen and serves the Grampian region as well as the Northern Isles, Shetland and Orkney, for tertiary maternity care. A dedicated midwives’ unit also based at the hospital provides shared maternity care for uncomplicated pregnancies. The hospital provides antenatal and postnatal care, with about 4000–5000 babies born every year. In addition, an early pregnancy unit based at the hospital manages complications such as miscarriage and other pregnancy loss. The AMND also captures data from these units.

The AMND population coverage varies according to different areas. It covers about 99% of Aberdeen and about 97% of the entire Grampian region. This differential coverage is due to a small proportion of home births and deliveries in peripheral hospitals.

This description references the International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 45, Issue 2, April 2016, Pages 389–394, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyv356

In 2023, the population of the United Kingdom reached 68.3 million, compared with 67.6 million in 2022. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 8.2 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 57.7 million people in 2023. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.44 million, 3.13 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.38 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at 8.8 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

In India, the crude birth rate in 1880 was 41.5 live births per thousand people, meaning that approximately 4.2 percent of the population had been born in that year. After an initial jump from 40.9 to 46.5 births per thousand between 1885 and 1890, India's crude birth rate remained consistent at just over 45 until the middle of the twentieth century. It was during the late 1940s that India gained its independence from the British Empire, and from this point the crude birth rate has gradually decreased from over 45 births per thousand people in 1945, to below twenty today. In 2020, it is expected to be just 18 births per thousand.

Global life expectancy at birth has risen significantly since the mid-1900s, from roughly 46 years in 1950 to 73.2 years in 2023. Post-COVID-19 projections There was a drop of 1.7 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2019 and 2021, however, figures resumed upon their previous trajectory the following year due to the implementation of vaccination campaigns and the lower severity of later strains of the virus. By the end of the century it is believed that global life expectancy from birth will reach 82 years, although growth will slow in the coming decades as many of the more-populous Asian countries reach demographic maturity. However, there is still expected to be a wide gap between various regions at the end of the 2100s, with the Europe and North America expected to have life expectancies around 90 years, whereas Sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to be in the low-70s. The Great Leap Forward While a decrease of one year during the COVID-19 pandemic may appear insignificant, this is the largest decline in life expectancy since the "Great Leap Forward" in China in 1958, which caused global life expectancy to fall by almost four years between by 1960. The "Great Leap Forward" was a series of modernizing reforms, which sought to rapidly transition China's agrarian economy into an industrial economy, but mismanagement led to tens of millions of deaths through famine and disease.

Life expectancy in the United Kingdom was below 39 years in the year 1765, and over the course of the next two and a half centuries, it is expected to have increased by more than double, to 81.1 by the year 2020. Although life expectancy has generally increased throughout the UK's history, there were several times where the rate deviated from its previous trajectory. These changes were the result of smallpox epidemics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new sanitary and medical advancements throughout time (such as compulsory vaccination), and the First world War and Spanish Flu epidemic in the 1910s.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

In 2022 the average age of mothers giving birth to their first child in England and Wales was 29.2 years of age, followed by 31.5 years for the second child, 32.6 for the third child, and 33.6 for the fourth child.

It is presumed that the first humans migrated from Siberia to North America approximately twelve thousand years ago, where they then moved southwards to warmer lands. It was not until many centuries later that humans returned to the north and began to settle regions that are now part of Canada. Despite a few short-lived Viking settlements on Newfoundland around the turn of the first millennium CE, the Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), became the first European to explore the coast of North America in the late 1400s. The French and British crowns both made claims to areas of Canada throughout the sixteenth century, but real colonization and settlement did not begin until the early seventeenth century. Over the next 150 years, France and Britain competed to take control of the booming fur and fishing trade, and to expand their overseas empires. In the Seven Year's War, Britain eventually defeated the French colonists in North America, through superior numbers and a stronger agriculture resources in the southern colonies, and the outcome of the war saw France cede practically all of it's colonies in North America to the British.

Increased migration and declining native populations

The early 1800s saw a large influx of migrants into Canada, with the Irish Potato Famine bringing the first wave of mass-migration to the country, with further migration coming from Scandinavia and Northern Europe. It is estimated that the region received just shy of one million migrants from the British Isles alone, between 1815 and 1850, which helped the population grow to 2.5 million in the mid-1800s and 5.5 million in 1900. It is also estimated that infectious diseases killed around 25 to 33 percent of all Europeans who migrated to Canada before 1891, and around a third of the Canadian population is estimated to have emigrated southwards to the United States in the 1871-1896 period. From the time of European colonization until the mid-nineteenth century, the native population of Canada dropped from roughly 500,000 (some estimates put it as high as two million) to just over 100,000; this was due to a mixture of disease, starvation and warfare, instigated by European migration to the region. The native population was generally segregated and oppressed until the second half of the 1900s; Native Canadians were given the vote in 1960, and, despite their complicated and difficult history, the Canadian government has made significant progress in trying to include indigenous cultures in the country's national identity in recent years. As of 2020, Indigenous Canadians make up more than five percent of the total Canadian population, and a higher birth rate means that this share of the population is expected to grow in the coming decades.

Independence and modern Canada

Canadian independence was finally acknowledged in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster, putting it on equal terms with the United Kingdom within the Commonwealth; virtually granting independence and sovereignty until the Canada Act of 1982 formalized it. Over the past century, Canada has had a relatively stable political system and economy (although it was hit particularly badly by the Wall Street Crash of 1929). Canada entered the First World War with Britain, and as an independent Allied Power in the Second World War; Canadian forces played pivotal roles in a number of campaigns, notably Canada's Hundred Days in WWI, and the country lost more than 100,000 men across both conflicts. The economy boomed in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a stream of socially democratic programs such as universal health care and the Canadian pension plan were introduced, which contributed to a rise in the standard of living. The post war period also saw various territories deciding to join Canada, with Newfoundland joining in 1949, and Nunavut in 1999. Today Canada is among the most highly ranked in countries in terms of civil liberties, quality of life and economic growth. It promotes and welcomes immigrants from all over the world and, as a result, it has one of the most ethnically diverse and multicultural populations of any country in the world. As of 2020, Canada's population stands at around 38 million people, and continues to grow due to high migration levels and life expectancy, and a steady birth rate.

In 1800, the population of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over 19 million, a figure which would rise steadily throughout the 19th century, reaching over 26 million by 1900. At the time, Bangladesh was the eastern part of the Bengal region in the British Raj, and had the most-concentrated Muslim population in the subcontinent's east. At the turn of the 20th century, the British colonial administration believed that east Bengal was economically lagging behind the west, and Bengal was partitioned in 1905 as a means of improving the region's development. East Bengal then became the only Muslim-majority state in the eastern Raj, which led to socioeconomic tensions between the Hindu upper classes and the general population. Bengal Famine During the Second World War, over 2.5 million men from across the British Raj enlisted in the British Army and their involvement was fundamental to the war effort. The war, however, had devastating consequences for the Bengal region, as the famine of 1943-1944 resulted in the deaths of up to three million people (with over two thirds thought to have been in the east) due to starvation and malnutrition-related disease. As the population boomed in the 1930s, East Bengal's mismanaged and underdeveloped agricultural sector could not sustain this growth; by 1942, food shortages spread across the region, millions began migrating in search of food and work, and colonial mismanagement exacerbated this further. On the brink of famine in early-1943, authorities in India called for aid and permission to redirect their own resources from the war effort to combat the famine, however these were mostly rejected by authorities in London. While the exact extent of each of these factors on causing the famine remains a topic of debate, the general consensus is that the British War Cabinet's refusal to send food or aid was the most decisive. Food shortages did not dissipate until late 1943, however famine deaths persisted for another year. Partition to independence Following the war, the movement for Indian independence reached its final stages as the process of British decolonization began. Unrest between the Raj's Muslim and Hindu populations led to the creation of two separate states in1947; the Muslim-majority regions became East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), separated by the Hindu-majority India. Although East Pakistan's population was larger, power lay with the military in the west, and authorities grew increasingly suppressive and neglectful of the eastern province in the following years. This reached a tipping point when authorities failed to respond adequately to the Bhola cyclone in 1970, which claimed over half a million lives in the Bengal region, and again when they failed to respect the results of the 1970 election, in which the Bengal party Awami League won the majority of seats. Bangladeshi independence was claimed the following March, leading to a brutal war between East and West Pakistan that claimed between 1.5 and three million deaths in just nine months. The war also saw over half of the country displaced, widespread atrocities, and the systematic rape of hundreds of thousands of women. As the war spilled over into India, their forces joined on the side of Bangladesh, and Pakistan was defeated two weeks later. An additional famine in 1974 claimed the lives of several hundred thousand people, meaning that the early 1970s was one of the most devastating periods in the country's history. Independent Bangladesh In the first decades of independence, Bangladesh's political hierarchy was particularly unstable and two of its presidents were assassinated in military coups. Since transitioning to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, things have become comparatively stable, although political turmoil, violence, and corruption are persistent challenges. As Bangladesh continues to modernize and industrialize, living standards have increased and individual wealth has risen. Service industries have emerged to facilitate the demands of Bangladesh's developing economy, while manufacturing industries, particularly textiles, remain strong. Declining fertility rates have seen natural population growth fall in recent years, although the influx of Myanmar's Rohingya population due to the displacement crisis has seen upwards of one million refugees arrive in the country since 2017. In 2020, it is estimated that Bangladesh has a population of approximately 165 million people.