Thank you for watching, you can see more of our work at: ifs.org.uk/ Timecodes: 00:00 - Shrinking countries 0:25 - Introduction 2:28 - What’s happening with birthrates? 7:50 - Inward migration 9:18 - Policy responses 12:58 - Public finance implications 15:58 - Is immigration sustainable? 20:40 - Why are birthrates falling? 25:28 - Costs of an ageing population 32:12 - Working age immigration 37:40 - Bringing people into labour force 39:37 - Retirement age 42:50 - Choice vs constraints 46:38 - Conclusion
Why on earth do we still have a 2 child benefit cap when women are not having enough babies and the population is aging? We should be paying women to have more and make housing and childcare a lot cheaper.
Please could you do an episode discussion Land Value Tax? Every time I hear an economist talk about it they seem to go all moon eyed, wax lyrical about how amazing that would be and what a shame it will never happen, and then move on to something else. Is it really that great and, if so, why haven’t we got one?
It does have a lot of benefits but it definitely would be politically difficult to sell. Not only is home ownership sold as the way for middle class people to escape poverty (when that's at the cost of other people as land is a fixed supply) it's also culturally seen as something you can't mess with. Then there's the richest people who have large property portfolios and land banks who have a lot of political power. I think a good start would be to replace council tax, stamp duty, and business rates with an LVT - it would need to be somewhere around 1% to raise the equivalent amount - Dan Niedle who has featured in some IFS stuff has some good stuff on LVT on his Tax Policy Associates site.
@ thanks, I’ll check that out! I imagine you would actually probably need it higher than 1% since you’d almost certainly want to have exceptions for things like farming and charities like the National Trust. But I would still enjoy a proper discussion on IFS Zooms In :)
These deaths of despair are linked to our neo liberal/selfish capitalist financial system for the most part. It is the economic system that needs to change with fairer wealth distribution, higher wages, secure permanent jobs for all etc. This is the answer I believe.
Yes definately, I think the essentials of life have been made too expensive, and along with economic insecurity, this has created a situation where it is too risky and/or undesirable for people to have children. Even animals in the zoo won't procreate if they're held captive, as many people are nowadays by the way the economy is setup.
No our population is not living longer due to austerity/low paid work leading to ill health. Pension age should not be raised in my opinion. Men and women could both retire at age 65 with different choices. A move to taxing wealth rather than work e.g. more tax on those with wealth/assets over £10 million would solve the problems. As mentioned our state pension is much less generous than most of Europe - criminal in my opinion.
It's really not that difficult! What was the situation when today's old people were young? 1. One income could support a whole family. 2. Housing was readily available for young adults in their 20s. 3. Pensioners were poorer and less numerous than today. 4. When people got old, they died and were allowed to die. 5. Young adults and children were the priority of government. Sorry if it's confusing. In sufficiently large numbers, the old crowd out the young.
The fall in life expectancy in England resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in recent decades, and life expectancy has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Future improvements in life expectancy depend on many factors. However, the outlook for England is not promising given the deterioration in population health. The poor health of children, the huge and growing backlog of unmet health care needs (pre-dating the pandemic but exacerbated by it), the almost 3 million - and rising - working-age adults unable to work because of long-term sickness, the persistent constraints on NHS capacity and widening health inequalities illustrate the scale of the challenges that need to be addressed. Added to these are the unpredictable risks of, for example, periodic resurgences in Covid-19, flu or other viral infections, and extreme climate change events such as the heatwaves in 2022. Life expectancy in the UK compared poorly with most comparator countries before the Covid-19 pandemic; higher excess mortality during the pandemic has resulted in the UK’s further downward slide in international life expectancy tables, with female life expectancy now the lowest among comparator countries (with the exception of the US). Meaningful long-term gains in reducing health inequalities and improving population health and the UK’s life expectancy relative to comparator countries have never been more urgent and yet also more challenging.
The Hungry Income polices are weird. Let’s be real - if a Women has 4 children - it is unlikely that she is career minded and will pay any meaningful amount of income tax. That’s a minimum of 6 years in her prime career building years at home with children. Even past the initial phase pregnancy and maternity leave, juggling 4 children and career is unlikely. It sounds more like a cynical policy to try coax mothers back into the workforce. If hungry was serious about improving fertility they would extend the income tax break the farther.
Immigration does not work to solve the issue of an ageing population. Canada has had a mindbogoling level of immigration over the past 5 years yet the population has still continued to age to an all time average age age of 41.6 years. Far from solving the issue of ageing, canadas immigration policy has likley exacerbaited it, as it is plausible that this massive boost in immigration has contributed to the further decline of canadas total fertility rate (which is now at an all time low of 1.26!!!) due to its pressure on the housing market and general infrastructure, along with the fact that immigrants who move to canada do not have replacement level birth rates. Besides its direct affect on ageing Canada's immigration policy has had massive social, political and economic ramifications such as the afformentioned steep increase in housing price, lower nation wide average productivity due to libralizing immigration visas to low productivity workers, suppresion of lower skilled wages, and incredibly fast change of the character of many neihgborhoods, towns, and cities against its' inhabitants wills. Western governments NEED to realise that immigration is NOT the solution to ageing populations. If anything, substantial increases in immigration exacerbaites the ageing problem in the long run due to housing and infrastrucutre pressures, creates second order nation wide economic problems, and above anything else is a deeply undemocratic way to address the problem as it is near unniveraly vastly unpopular. the ageging population of western societies will be a critical issue of the next half century, especially hear in the UK; maximizing effort into increasing the birth rate, and adapting our economies to the new reality of older populations is the only way we can have a prosperous future.
It is a whole load of issues. Cost is a factor , but also women having the ability through contraception not to have children. Children are a major commitment if you are to do it well .
Hey paul, hey IFS, its not a mystery if you think about the economic benefit of having children. In the good old days, no state or even private pensions, no welfare, you would be mad to not have children. These days where children are a dead loss, why would you want them? Explain to an alien what the economic benefit is of having a child in the 21st century - to the parents themselves who bear the costs. The costs of housing etc issues all assume that everyone "just wants children" but they don't.
Is it really any surprise given how difficult having a family has been made in most developed countries. Edit ps no im not happy to keep working a second longer than I have to.
@@harrydamien6346 and yet buying a house used to be 3 years your yearly salary and now it's 8 or more and if you cant live with ur parents ur extorted in rent
21:58 this woman rattles off the usual biased take against men that "women do all the house work". Sth Korean men work 16.5 hours more per month than women, so it's not like they are sitting around watching the women work. Couples/families are free to organise themselves how they wish, they don't need some busybody sticking her nose in telling them they have it all wrong 🙄
Women generally do more housework than men, and the gap is significant: Unpaid work Women do around 26 hours of unpaid work per week, while men do around 16 hours. Employed women Employed women spend about 2.3 hours per day on housework, while employed men spend about 1.6 hours. Households with children About 91% of women with children spend at least an hour per day on housework, compared with 30% of men with children. British households Women do more housework than men in 93% of British households. Etc.
Thank you for watching, you can see more of our work at: ifs.org.uk/
Timecodes:
00:00 - Shrinking countries
0:25 - Introduction
2:28 - What’s happening with birthrates?
7:50 - Inward migration
9:18 - Policy responses
12:58 - Public finance implications
15:58 - Is immigration sustainable?
20:40 - Why are birthrates falling?
25:28 - Costs of an ageing population
32:12 - Working age immigration
37:40 - Bringing people into labour force
39:37 - Retirement age
42:50 - Choice vs constraints
46:38 - Conclusion
Boomer advice - "Don't spend money on things you can't afford"
Younger generations "Ok understood"
Economist "Why aren't people having children??"
Why on earth do we still have a 2 child benefit cap when women are not having enough babies and the population is aging? We should be paying women to have more and make housing and childcare a lot cheaper.
yes, and versus open borders.
Very good topic.
It's not a cap on child benefit - it's a cap on the child portion of Universal Credit.
Please could you do an episode discussion Land Value Tax? Every time I hear an economist talk about it they seem to go all moon eyed, wax lyrical about how amazing that would be and what a shame it will never happen, and then move on to something else. Is it really that great and, if so, why haven’t we got one?
It does have a lot of benefits but it definitely would be politically difficult to sell. Not only is home ownership sold as the way for middle class people to escape poverty (when that's at the cost of other people as land is a fixed supply) it's also culturally seen as something you can't mess with. Then there's the richest people who have large property portfolios and land banks who have a lot of political power. I think a good start would be to replace council tax, stamp duty, and business rates with an LVT - it would need to be somewhere around 1% to raise the equivalent amount - Dan Niedle who has featured in some IFS stuff has some good stuff on LVT on his Tax Policy Associates site.
@ thanks, I’ll check that out! I imagine you would actually probably need it higher than 1% since you’d almost certainly want to have exceptions for things like farming and charities like the National Trust. But I would still enjoy a proper discussion on IFS Zooms In :)
These deaths of despair are linked to our neo liberal/selfish capitalist financial system for the most part. It is the economic system that needs to change with fairer wealth distribution, higher wages, secure permanent jobs for all etc. This is the answer I believe.
Yes definately, I think the essentials of life have been made too expensive, and along with economic insecurity, this has created a situation where it is too risky and/or undesirable for people to have children. Even animals in the zoo won't procreate if they're held captive, as many people are nowadays by the way the economy is setup.
No our population is not living longer due to austerity/low paid work leading to ill health. Pension age should not be raised in my opinion. Men and women could both retire at age 65 with different choices. A move to taxing wealth rather than work e.g. more tax on those with wealth/assets over £10 million would solve the problems. As mentioned our state pension is much less generous than most of Europe - criminal in my opinion.
It's really not that difficult! What was the situation when today's old people were young? 1. One income could support a whole family. 2. Housing was readily available for young adults in their 20s. 3. Pensioners were poorer and less numerous than today. 4. When people got old, they died and were allowed to die. 5. Young adults and children were the priority of government. Sorry if it's confusing. In sufficiently large numbers, the old crowd out the young.
This is a GOOD thing
The fall in life expectancy in England resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in recent decades, and life expectancy has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Future improvements in life expectancy depend on many factors. However, the outlook for England is not promising given the deterioration in population health. The poor health of children, the huge and growing backlog of unmet health care needs (pre-dating the pandemic but exacerbated by it), the almost 3 million - and rising - working-age adults unable to work because of long-term sickness, the persistent constraints on NHS capacity and widening health inequalities illustrate the scale of the challenges that need to be addressed. Added to these are the unpredictable risks of, for example, periodic resurgences in Covid-19, flu or other viral infections, and extreme climate change events such as the heatwaves in 2022.
Life expectancy in the UK compared poorly with most comparator countries before the Covid-19 pandemic; higher excess mortality during the pandemic has resulted in the UK’s further downward slide in international life expectancy tables, with female life expectancy now the lowest among comparator countries (with the exception of the US). Meaningful long-term gains in reducing health inequalities and improving population health and the UK’s life expectancy relative to comparator countries have never been more urgent and yet also more challenging.
The Hungry Income polices are weird.
Let’s be real - if a Women has 4 children - it is unlikely that she is career minded and will pay any meaningful amount of income tax. That’s a minimum of 6 years in her prime career building years at home with children. Even past the initial phase pregnancy and maternity leave, juggling 4 children and career is unlikely. It sounds more like a cynical policy to try coax mothers back into the workforce.
If hungry was serious about improving fertility they would extend the income tax break the farther.
On migrant workers - have a look at Saudi Arabia's population pyramid to see a different model.
Immigration does not work to solve the issue of an ageing population. Canada has had a mindbogoling level of immigration over the past 5 years yet the population has still continued to age to an all time average age age of 41.6 years. Far from solving the issue of ageing, canadas immigration policy has likley exacerbaited it, as it is plausible that this massive boost in immigration has contributed to the further decline of canadas total fertility rate (which is now at an all time low of 1.26!!!) due to its pressure on the housing market and general infrastructure, along with the fact that immigrants who move to canada do not have replacement level birth rates. Besides its direct affect on ageing Canada's immigration policy has had massive social, political and economic ramifications such as the afformentioned steep increase in housing price, lower nation wide average productivity due to libralizing immigration visas to low productivity workers, suppresion of lower skilled wages, and incredibly fast change of the character of many neihgborhoods, towns, and cities against its' inhabitants wills. Western governments NEED to realise that immigration is NOT the solution to ageing populations. If anything, substantial increases in immigration exacerbaites the ageing problem in the long run due to housing and infrastrucutre pressures, creates second order nation wide economic problems, and above anything else is a deeply undemocratic way to address the problem as it is near unniveraly vastly unpopular. the ageging population of western societies will be a critical issue of the next half century, especially hear in the UK; maximizing effort into increasing the birth rate, and adapting our economies to the new reality of older populations is the only way we can have a prosperous future.
It is a whole load of issues. Cost is a factor , but also women having the ability through contraception not to have children. Children are a major commitment if you are to do it well .
Hey paul, hey IFS, its not a mystery if you think about the economic benefit of having children. In the good old days, no state or even private pensions, no welfare, you would be mad to not have children. These days where children are a dead loss, why would you want them? Explain to an alien what the economic benefit is of having a child in the 21st century - to the parents themselves who bear the costs.
The costs of housing etc issues all assume that everyone "just wants children" but they don't.
Is it really any surprise given how difficult having a family has been made in most developed countries. Edit ps no im not happy to keep working a second longer than I have to.
76 pence in 1972 would be worth £10 of today’s money.
The Corporatocracy takes all the wealth to the point people cannot afford children.
That's meaningless if salaries increased more than inflation.
Which they consistently did.
@@harrydamien6346 and yet buying a house used to be 3 years your yearly salary and now it's 8 or more and if you cant live with ur parents ur extorted in rent
Its simple really when you require both the man and woman to work dont be surprised that thes not time / room for children
You talk about pro-natal policies and their high costs. So how much do you think our pro-geriatric policies cost? 100s of £billions a year!
The Climate nutters.
21:58 this woman rattles off the usual biased take against men that "women do all the house work". Sth Korean men work 16.5 hours more per month than women, so it's not like they are sitting around watching the women work.
Couples/families are free to organise themselves how they wish, they don't need some busybody sticking her nose in telling them they have it all wrong 🙄
Women generally do more housework than men, and the gap is significant:
Unpaid work
Women do around 26 hours of unpaid work per week, while men do around 16 hours.
Employed women
Employed women spend about 2.3 hours per day on housework, while employed men spend about 1.6 hours.
Households with children
About 91% of women with children spend at least an hour per day on housework, compared with 30% of men with children.
British households
Women do more housework than men in 93% of British households.
Etc.
@@phueal so dont have children then, its simple