UK births hit 48-year low as 40% born to foreign parents
England and Wales recorded their lowest live births since 1976, with 40.2 percent of babies born in 2025 having at least one foreign-born parent as the fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.39.
The Office for National Statistics released provisional figures on May 27 revealing 585,396 live births across England and Wales in 2025, according to Brussels Signal. That represents a 1.6 percent decline from the 594,677 births recorded in 2024.
The total fertility rate has now fallen to 1.39 children per woman, down from 1.41 the previous year and marking the lowest rate on record. This figure sits well below the replacement level of approximately 2.1 children per woman, the benchmark required for a population to sustain itself without relying on immigration.
Four Decades of Demographic Decline
Fertility rates across England and Wales have been trending downward since 2010. Scotland faces an even more severe situation, with its fertility rate dropping to roughly 1.25, the lowest figure since civil registration began in 1855, according to National Records of Scotland.
The share of births involving at least one foreign-born parent climbed to 40.2 percent in 2025, up from 39.5 percent in 2024. This proportion has risen steadily over the past twenty years amid sustained net migration. For comparison, the figure stood at 35.8 percent in 2022 and 37.3 percent in 2023.
Demographic Transformation Underway
Only 330,040 children born in 2025 had both parents born in the UK, representing 56.4 percent of all births. By contrast, 458,381 children were born to two UK-born parents in 2008, highlighting the dramatic shift in just under two decades.
The leading countries of birth for non-UK mothers were India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Romania and Bangladesh. Fathers followed a nearly identical pattern, with Romania and Bangladesh switching positions. India has held the top spot for both groups since 2022, with Pakistan consistently in second place.
Mothers are now giving birth at an average age of 31.1 years, while fathers average 34.0 years, continuing a long-term pattern of delayed parenthood. Demographers attribute the broader birth decline to postponed childbearing, elevated housing costs, economic pressures and changing social attitudes among younger generations.
Long-Term Projections Point to Major Shift
David Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Demography at Oxford University, has modeled the trajectory of current trends. Assuming sustained net migration at recent levels of approximately 230,000 to 250,000 annually alongside persistently low native fertility, his projections indicate the White British population will fall below 50 percent of the UK total by the early 2060s.
Under this scenario, the White British share would decline from roughly 73 percent today to about 57 percent by 2050 and just one-third by 2100.
The combination of sub-replacement fertility among the UK-born population and heavy reliance on immigration to maintain overall population numbers presents long-term challenges for workforce sustainability, public finances and social cohesion, as Brussels Signal reports.
Births to UK-born mothers have fallen particularly sharply over the past fifteen years, while births involving foreign-born parents have risen correspondingly, fundamentally reshaping the demographic profile of the nation.
With information from Brussels Signal
