Category: Families and Households

The global decline in fertility rates: causes and consequences

The global birth rate is declining due to various factors such as economic insecurity and high living costs, leading to concerns about an ageing population and economic strain on welfare systems. Attempts to boost birth rates through government policies have had limited success. Family-friendly policies and immigration are suggested solutions, but social trends are hard to reverse.

Birth rates are dropping almost everywhere. Two-thirds of the world’s population now lives in countries where the total fertility rate (TFR) – a measure of births per woman per lifetime – has dropped below 2.1, the number needed to keep the population constant. 

According the to World Bank Open Data, the global TFR reached 2.3 in 2021; it will soon drop below the 2.1 replacement rate if it hasn’t already. 

In the Europe and the UK the rate stands at 1.5 and 1.49 respectively. In East Asia, it is 1.2 and Latin America 1.9. 

As recently as 2017 the UN was predicting the world’s population would climb to 11.2 billion by 2100. The UN now predicts it will peak at 10.4 billion in 2080. After this point it will start declining. This is from 8 billion today. 

UN population predictions

This decline could, in fact, happen decades earlier. 

This will be the first such global-population decline since the Black Death in the Middle Ages. ‘The demographic winter is coming’ said Jesus Fernandez- Villarde of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Why is the birth rate dropping?

This could be due to problems such as increasing economic insecurity, and the high cost of living, especially housing and childcare. 

However fertility rates almost always come down when nations reach a certain level of economic and social development. This is known as ‘demographic transition’.

How do patterns vary globally?

Declining fertility used to be seen as a rich countries problem and to some extent it still is. The highest fertility rates in the world, of around five or six births, are in sub-Saharan countries such as Niger, Angola, and DRC. But now even poorer states have seen sharp falls in their fertility rates. In India, for example, the TFR fell to 2 in 2020!

graph showing declining fertility rates in different regions

Why are people worried?

There are two main concerns. 

People are having fewer children than they want. Polls suggest that UK women on average want between two and three children. 

Second is the consequences for the dependency ratio. The dependency ratio is the number of people of working age relative the number of people not of working age (children and retired people).

A shrinking population means that more jobs will go unfilled and economic dynamism will reduce. The most immediate fear is that welfare systems will be underfunded. They rely on working age people to fund them, after all. 

Today the G7 richest economies have roughly three people of working age for everyone one over 65, but by 2050 they will have fewer than two. 

In South Korea, the national pension fund is expected to run out of cash by 2055. South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.72.

Can birth rates be boosted?

Governments are trying but nothing has been very effective. 

Japan has experimented with childcare subsidies and stipends since the 1990s. Its fertility rate climbed from 1.26 in 2005 to 1.45 in 2015. But then sank to 1.2 again by 2023. 

South Korea has invested a staggering $270 billion in fertility initiatives since 2006 but its birth rates keep declining. 

In France Macron has offered better paid parental leave and fertility check ups. However this hasn’t changed anything.

Hungary has had some success. It spends 5% of GDP trying to prop up the birth rate. It provides three years of parental leave to mothers and lifelong exemption from income tax for women who have a child before aged 30. And loans of $36K which are written off for couples who have at least three children and a subsidised minivan.  And free IVF to women, but not single women or lesbians. Hungary’s birth rate has increased from 1.2 in 2011 to 1.5 today. 

Extreme right-wing policies boost birth rates

In Romania inn 1966 NC decree 770 removed contraception from sale and abortion was restricted, the fertility rate jumped from 1.9 to 3.7 within a year. 

Do family friendly policies help?

Some of the world’s lowest fertility rates are in nations where women play an important role in the workplace, but where traditional gender roles have endured, and where there has been little provision for maternity or paternity leave. 

For example, Japan, South Korea, Italy (1.2) and Taiwan (0.8) all have very low birth rates.

But eventhe most family friendly nations have low fertility rates such as Finland (1.32) Norway (1.4) and Sweden (1.45) 

It seems the social trends behind low fertility are hard to reverse. 

Other solutions to sort out the dependency ratio

Immigration is one possible solution to the ageing population. However the numbers would have to very large to solve the problems. We’d need net migration to be 500 000 a year in the UK for several years to maintain the current ratio of working age to dependent people.

A second solution is to plan for a smaller, older population. This must involve adopting technological solutions such as automating as many job roles as possible.

Signposting

This is relevant to the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

This post serves as an update to trends in the birth rate, in global perspective.

It is also relevant to the consequences of an ageing population.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) provides a multidisciplinary examination of England’s ageing population by exploring factors ranging from income and social inequalities to physical and mental health. Running for over 20 years, the study integrates biological, genetic, medical, and social data from more than 19,000 participants and is particularly insightful for social policy decisions. Compelling findings show links between inequality and aging rate, and a noticeable rise in social isolation.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a scientific examination of how the population of England is ageing from a multidisciplinary perspective.

ELSA explores how a number of factors such as income, wealth, social inequalities, past life experiences, work, spending patterns, physical and mental health and well being are all related through the ageing process.

The study has been going for over 20 years now and the data helps understand the determinants of healthy ageing over a long period of time. It has also contributed to social policy decisions around pensions and social care. 

ELSA started in 2000 with a sample of 10 000 people and their partners, to date there have been over 19 000 participants. It is a a cohort study with the same people being interviewed every two years, 

The study collects a range of biological, genetic, medical, physiological, psychological and social data.

This is an excellent example of a very long standing longitudinal study.

Key questions asked of respondents include: 

  • Basic demographic data
  • Work, income, benefits, savings
  • Health mental and physical 
  • Social and civic engagement 
  • Spending patterns
  • Also end of life with relatives of the deceased. 

Some years involve more in-depth questions and cognitive tests. Every four years a nurse visits to collect blood samples and measures other  health indicators. 

Respondents have recently been interviewed in more depth about their retrospective life histories. Participants have also granted access to their financial and health records.

ELSA: Main aims  

To examine the ways in which different aspects of life are linked: 

  • What is the relationship between financial security and health? 
  • Why does the health of those in lower social positions decline faster? 
  • How have changes in pension arrangements affected decisions about retirement? 
  • How do social relationships change with age, and affect health and wellbeing? 
  • How does declining cognitive function affect the ability to plan a financial future?

ELSA has been designed to be compatible with the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) so direct comparisons can be made. There are 15 similar studies in other countries, meaning broader cross national comparisons can also be made. 

Data from ELSA has been used to model pensions, welfare and disability policies. It has also been used to contribute to policies to get older people back to work and to develop national strategies for loneliness.

ESLA: Selected Findings and contributions 

The report breaks down the main findings into several different areas, below are just a few selected key points:

Inequality drives every aspect of ageing…

  • Greater wealth was linked to slower decline on all health measures used: for example the reduction in walking speed was 38 per cent greater in the lowest quarter of the wealth range than in the highest.
  • People from deprived neighbourhoods more likely to feel socially isolated.
  • Lack of education earlier on life means worse memory deterioration in later life. 

Inadequate health and social care 

The research revealed a large gap between the care that is recommended and care which is actually received, particularly for conditions most strongly associated with growing older….

bar chart showing lack of social care in the UK

Increasing social isolation 

The participants, all aged 52 and older, were asked in 2004 if they had a partner, how often they saw friends and family and whether they were members of clubs, organisations, committees or religious groups. They were also asked if they sometimes felt they lacked company. Around one in five were socially isolated or felt lonely, or both. 

The study followed those people up in 2012 to see how many had died.

 Other social factors that could lead to isolation were taken into account – a lack of social networks was known to be more common among people who were poorer, who had health problems or who had only basic education. In the most isolated fifth of the group around one in five had died, compared with one in eight in the least isolated.

Those who are isolated or lonely die sooner – but a range of background issues such as poverty, poor health and lack of education are a key part of the picture and are linked to mortality.

In England and Wales the proportion of 45- 64 year-olds living alone rose by 53 per cent between 1996 and 2012.

However a counter trend to this is caused by rising housing costs. There has been an 8.5% increase in adult children living with 50-64 year olds. 

Work and Pensions 

Objective measures of poor health only explains 15% of the decline in work for those aged 50-70. 

Among those aged 60-64 in 2013/14 around a quarter of men and almost four in ten women are well enough to work but are not working.

Those in better health are significantly more likely to carry on working, along with married men and highly educated women.

Among those who had full-time jobs, the hours worked were dropping. The change took place across the social spectrum and affected the full age range as well as those in different types of job

When planning for pensions, men underestimate their life expectancy by 10 years and women by nine years. 

ELSA and Social Changes

In 2000, average life expectancy for men in the UK was 75 and for women 80. 

What we learned in the last 20 years maybe something different to what we learn in the next 20 years!

In the first decade of the 21st Century life expectancy increased: the over-50s now constitute 40 per cent of the British population and by 2050 three in 10 will be over 60. And though there are signs the increase may have stalled, there is much that is positive to say.

By 2010 the figures had risen to 79 and 83, though no further increase occurred between then and 2020.But the health and social care needs of older people have grown, too.

We have learned a lot from the last 20 years of ELSA, but already what we have learned may not be relevant going forwards! Times are a changing!

Signposting

This material is directly relevant to the families and households module, part of A-level sociology.

Are Single People Discriminated Against…?

The number of single people has increased over the last several decades. However, there is still something of a stigma attached to being single. Society seems to still be geared towards couples and families as the ‘normal’ social unit. Single people are often overlooked and some sociologists suggest single people may be discriminated against. 

This is according to a recent Analysis podcast on Radio 4. 

The main reason for the increase in single people is women’s liberation. Women now have higher levels of educational achievement than men and are more likely to be in work. Women are more likely to choose to live alone, and more likely to seek divorce. Of divorced people, men are twice as likely than women to recouple. Many more older women live alone than men. 

Are single people discriminated against?

Some of the ways single people may be discriminated against include:

It is more expensive to live alone. SIngle person households spend 92% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, food and bills. This compares to only 83% of disposable income spent by couples. 

Letting agencies tend to discriminate against single people. They prefer couples because there are two incomes coming in, which they think is more secure. 

Employers and employees expect more from single people as workers. The default view is that single people have fewer commitments outside of work than people with families. Thus it is single people who are expected to work odd hours or at the weekends if required. 

Many holidays are geared towards couples, with single rooms often being the most inferior. 

Getting engaged, married, or having children are seen as social markers of progress. Being single is just kind of overlooked. 

You rarely hear single people talked about in the news, and they are rarely the focus of social policy. There is a lot of talk and policies aimed at helping families, for example, but rarely anything for single people. 

An exception to this was during lockdown. The government announced that people living alone could form support bubbles with people in other households. This was one of the few times single people were explicitly mentioned in social policy. 

Single women living alone are seen in a negative light. We have the spinster stereotype for example. 

All of this is a problem when single people are a diverse group. There are many routes into singledom. 

One of the ways social policy could adapt to single people is by allowing single workers time off to look after friends or pets.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module.

How did the Pandemic affect gender relations at home? 

both men and women did more housework and childcare, but women still did a lot more than men!

Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that while men did proportionally more childcare and housework during lockdown compared to pre-lockdown, women did more housework and childcare than their male partners during the lockdowns and women’s pay took a larger hit than men’s. 

The fact that women continued to shoulder the burden of domestic work and childcare cannot be explained by differences in occupations or income and seems to be explained simply by gender norms. 

Data was collected using an online survey of almost 5000 parents with at least one child aged between 4 and 15 years, conducted during the first Lockdown between 29 April and 15 May 2020, this survey used a diary instrument to measure time use during this period, and the survey also collected data on occupation and income before and during the Pandemic. 

Before lockdown mothers were at 82% of the employment rate of fathers, this fell to 70% during lockdown. 

Lockdowns involved an increase in domestic labour and childcare for both men and women…

infographics showing the increase in housework and childcare for men and women during lockdown

During lockdown mothers did four hours more on childcare and housework than fathers, and this is true of women in higher and lower income jobs. 

The research also found that this isn’t because of couples being rational about men earning more than women, even in couples where men and women earned the same, or women earned more than men, women still did proportionally more housework and childcare than men. 

In conclusion it seems that the sudden shock of being forced into more home work did relatively little to change the traditional gender divide in the domestic division of labour. 

However this doesn’t necessarily mean that shifting towards more home working and flexible working hours will continue to reinforce such patterns going forwards, under normal working circumstances rather than in the middle of a pandemic!

Sources and Signposting…

Click to access WP2117-The-gendered-division-of-paid-and-domestic-work-under-lockdown.pdf

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module, which is usually taught as part of the families and households module.

If offers broad support for the radical feminist view that when the nuclear family becomes relatively more isolated, as happened during lockdown, we revert to more traditional, ‘patriarchal’ relations between men and women.

Home working reinforces traditional domestic roles…

but flexible work hours leads to more gender equality at home.

An analysis of six years of longitudinal data from between 2010 and 2016 has found that home working reinforces a traditional gendered division of domestic labour while flexible working leads to a more equal domestic arrangement. 

The research analysed data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2010-2016) which surveyed 1700 working parents with at least one child aged under 12.

Overall, women spend more than twice as long as men doing housework. Women reported doing 13.4 hours of housework a week on average, men reported doing an average of 5.5; while 54% of women reported being primarily responsible for childcare.  

Further data analysis adjusted the stats for income, education level, ethnicity, age and neighbourhood to isolate the effect of working from home on childcare and housework.

Fathers working from home were half as likely to report they were sharing child care compared to those who were not working from home, with men fearing they may lose their masculinity when taking on more routine tasks.

Whereas women working from home were twice as likely to report they were primarily responsible for childcare compared to those who were not working from home. 

The effect was greater for lower income couples: women doing low income jobs at home spent proportionately more time doing domestic work than women in higher income jobs. 

graphs showing how gender equality at home changes with working from home and flexible working hours.

Flexible working hours led to a more equal gendered division of labour

Flexitime, where men and women have some degree of control over their working hours (days of the week/ start and finish times) led to a more equal division of domestic labour. 

Conclusions and relevance

The broad conclusions are that working from home does not benefit women, but flexible working arrangements do, so if we want to see a more equal division of labour and childcare we want to push for more flexible working hours, not necessarily more home-working hours! 

You need to be careful when using this research as the results are open to interpretation.

If we just allow men and women to work at home then this reinforces traditional gendered divisions of labour. This suggests that if the domestic sphere is further isolated from society this results in ‘patriarchal norms’ being reinforced. This seems to suggest support for the radical feminist view that the isolated, privatised nuclear family is oppressive to women: as they end up doing more domestic labour, men end up doing less when both partners do more paid work from home.

HOWEVER, the fact that more flexible working hours results in more gender equality in how domestic chores are divided offers support for liberal feminism: when men and women are both working but more flexibly, this breaks down the oppressive traditional division of labour, but this requires men and women to be out at work.

Overall, it suggests that a good social policy change would be to introduce more flexible working hours in general, but that pushing for more home based working isn’t such a good idea, if we are interested in more gender equality at home that is!

Limitations of this research

One limitation of this survey is the relatively low sample sizes for those home working and doing flexitime. 

Only 7% of men used working from home arrangements, and only 5% of women. Only 15% of women used flexitime, and only 11% men. 

This means with a sample size of 1700, only around 50 men would have been working from home in that sample, and once you control for income, location, and ethnicity you have some very small sub-samples, for example. 

Sources and Signposting

Heejung Chung and Cara Booker (August, 2022) Work, Employment and Society: Flexible Working and the Division of Housework and Childcare: Examining Divisions across Arrangement and Occupational Lines.

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module, usually taught as part of the first year within A-level sociology.

How Motherhood and Fatherhood affect paid and domestic work

mothers are more likely to take time off work and do 10 hours more housework and childcare than fathers.

One of way of measuring the relative effects of motherhood and fatherhood on paid and domestic labour is to compare the following two subsets:

  • Mothers in relation to women without dependent children compared to
  • Fathers in relation to men without dependent children.

Comparing these two subsets would be a useful contribution to evaluating Liberal and Radical Feminist theories about how family life affects women. Broadly speaking:

  • Liberal Feminists claim that family life (compared to women remaining childless) has little or no negative impact on women.
  • Radical Feminists claim that family life has a negative impact on women, as women are more likely to quit their jobs when children are born, and they end up doing more childcare than men, and continue to do more housework too, suffering from the triple shift.

Generally speaking if mothers are doing less paid work and more domestic work than women without dependent children, while fathers are doing more paid work and less domestic work than men without dependent children, it’s reasonable to say this suggests more support for radical compared to liberal feminism.

HOWEVER, we’d still need to do further research to test this out: statistics don’t give us in-depth data and allow us to conclusively prove or dismiss either of these broad theoretical positions, they just point in one direction or the other.

This post looks at the following data taken from the ONS’ (1)

  • The percentages of mothers, fathers and men and women without dependent children in employment
  • The percentage of mothers in full time work by age of child
  • The percentages of 24-35 year old mothers and fathers in work.
  • How much housework mothers and fathers do.

You can view all of the stats below on my Tableau page.

Motherhood and fatherhood encourage traditional gender roles

The graphic below shows the percentages of mothers, fathers and men/ women without dependent children in paid employment 2002-21, U.K.

In 2021 72% of men without dependent children were in work compared to 92% of fathers. 69% of women were in work compared to 76% of mothers.

So… both men and women with children are more likely to be in work compared to those without children (but this data also includes retired people, so no surprise, maybe!)

What’s interesting is the relative difference between men and women without children and mothers and fathers:

Mothers are much less likely to be work than fathers, the figures for men and women without children in work are much closer together.

This suggests having children is more likely to result in women leaving paid employment to take on a caring role while having children encourages men into the breadwinner role.

Only 30% of women with new born children work full-time

Bar chart showing percentage of mothers in full time work by age of child.

It’s probably unsurprising, but only 30% of women with very young children aged one, and the percentage increases gradually until 49% of women with 18 year olds are in paid employment.

This is a clear trend of women taken a period of employment and then gradually returning in greater numbers as their children get older.

The figures for men hardly change at all with children being born (not shown on graphic).

Young women are affected most

This statistic is the strongest evidence of how motherhood has a detrimental affect on women’s careers compared to fatherhood.

bar chart comparing number of young mothers and fathers in work, UK 2022.

For 24-35 year olds, MORE women without dependent children are in paid work than men.

However, only 69% of 24-35 year old mothers are in employment compared to a massive 92% of fathers in the same age category.

Women do more housework and childcare

In 2022 women did 30 minutes more unpaid housework per day than men and they did one hour extra of childcare.

Over the course of a week, this means women with dependent children are doing 10 hours more childcare and housework combined than men.

This seems to be strong evidence of mothers suffering from the triple shift.

Conclusions: support for radical feminism?

The above statistical evidence seems to offer some support for the radical feminist view that families are harmful to women, in that having children results in women being more likely to take time off paid-work compared to men and mothers doing 10 hours more domestic labour and childcare per week than men.

Sources and Signposting

This material is most relevant to the families and households module, usually taught as part of the first year A-level sociology course.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

(1) Office for National Statistics: Families and the Labour Market UK, 2021.

Screenshots of Tableau embeds:

women and men in paid work
bar chart showing hours per day childcare and domestic labour done by mothers and fathers, UK 2022.

Net migration to the UK increasing!

Net migration to the UK reached 600 000 in December 2022, up more than 50% since December 2018.

graph showing net migration to the UK 2018. to2022

Since Brexit net migration from the EU has been declining, with around 50 000 more EU Citizens leaving the UK than entering; and the increase in net migration is driven entirely from non-EU countries, especially Nigeria, Bangladesh and India.

Reasons for Migration to the UK

The main reason for the recent increase in migration is more people coming to study in the UK, and much of that is driven by the dependent partners and children of students coming to join them.

After that, work is the main reason, with people coming in the take up jobs in sectors of our labour market where there are vacancies, such as health and social care and seasonal agricultural work.

bar chart showing reasons for migration to the UK 2018 to 2022

2022 also saw more humanitarian sources of migration with more than 100 000 refugees come to the UK from the Ukraine and more from Hong Kong.

Analysis

Immigration is a sensitive political issue, with 60% of the UK population thinking it is too high according to YouGov tracking (2).

However it is also clear that we need immigration to fill gaps in the job market and a lot of the increase from 2021 to 2022 was about doing just that.

Also, very few people believe we took in too few refugees from Ukraine so people are not outright opposed to migration.

Finally, the figures are somewhat skewed by students coming the UK to study for three years, and bringing their dependents…. most of these will return home after study, and while they are here they are paying huge fees to British universities which should benefit the UK economy: they are basically paying to be here!

From a policy perspective, however, such levels of net migration to the UK are the highest on record, which suggests a profound failure of government policy given that every PM since 2010 has been elected on the promise of bringing net migration down, which simply hasn’t happened.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This material is primarily relevant to the demography topic, which is part of the families and households module.

Sources

Census UK (accessed May 2023) Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2022

(2) YouGov: attitudes to immigration tracker.

The Myth of the Generational Divide

the idea that there is a ‘war’ between younger and older generations is a media construction.

Media narratives suggest that we are in the middle of a generational war: Baby Boomers are selfish sociopaths who are steeling the future of younger generations and Millennials are narcissistic ‘WOKE’ obsessed snowflakes.

For example, at the end end of 2019 Great Thunberg was named Time magazine’s person of the year, with the magazine calling her a ‘standard bearer in a generational battle’, but this characterisation of there being a ‘battle’ between the generations around climate change isn’t born out by the statistics: old people are just as likely to be concerned about the environment as young people.

However, while there is a growing separation between the young and the old, with resentments mainly concerning economic, housing and health inequalities, the generations share more in common than you might think and there is still a decent degree of intergenerational goodwill.

This goodwill was demonstrated during the response of the younger generations to the Covid Pandemic: the vast majority obeyed lockdown rules to protect the older generations, despite the fact that the chance of young people dying from the virus was very small.

In order to truly understand the differences in attitudes between generations, and thus the extent of any generational divide, we need to distinguish between three things:

  • Period effects – the effect of big events on populations
  • Lifecycle effects – how people change as they age
  • Cohort effects – genuine differences between the generations.

It is only the later where we can really talk about there being ‘generational differences’, and in fact quite a lot of differences in attitude are down to the first two above.

For example, concern about terrorism tends to increase for ALL age groups when there is large scale terrorist attack (a period effect); people tend to get fatter as they get older (a Lifecyle effect); but church attendance is truly effected by cohort: older generations are more likely to attend church than younger generations.

To examine differences between generations without taking into account period effects and lifestyle effects is to ignore two thirds of ‘age based’ analysis!

IF we take the time to do ‘synthetic cohort analysis’ we find the differences between generations are not as drastic as the media would have us believe.

A Moral Panic?

The narrative of young people against old people makes for good headlines, but it is almost certainly something of a moral panic, and we must remember that:

  • Young people have always been seen as a problem by older people, with moral panics about youth being recurring.
  • Young people have always been more likely to adopt the latest fads and fashions.
  • Older people have been stereotyped for decades, usually negatively

It follows that media criticism of young people as snowflakes or WOKE obsessed, and the ‘OK Boomer’ refrain from the young are nothing new: the old have always criticized the young, and the young have always seen the old as reactionary.

But there are generational differences

Having said this, there are differences in opportunities between the generations: young people do face economic, housing and health challenges that their parents and grandparents did not and do not, as a general rule.

And while the exact boundaries between the classic generational dividing lines are blurred (Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z) there are meaningful differences in life-experience between them.

However, it is NOT helpful to characterise the generations as being at war, what we need to improve the lives of Gen Z, for example, is more intergenerational goodwill of the sort we saw during the Covid Pandemic.

Sources and Signposting

This post was summarised from Bobby Duffy (2021) The Generation Divide: We We Can’t Agree and Why we Should.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Legal Age for Marriage Raised to 18

The legal age of marriage in the UK rose from 16 to 18 years of on Monday 27th February 2023.

The reason behind this was to protect vulnerable teenagers aged 16 to 17 being manipulated or coerced into marriage against their will.

There have been thousands of cases of forced marriage in recent years where children, many from Asian backgrounds, have been taken out the United Kingdom shortly after their 16th birthdays and made to perform marriage ceremonies to men they have never met before.

This is usually arranged by their elderly family members without the child’s prior knowledge and can sometimes result in the child returning home weeks or months later already pregnant and with her new husband.

Preventing forced marriage of children is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and marrying off a child agains their will is a breach of international human rights.

With this change to the legislation, 16 and 17 year olds are now brought under similar levels of protection against harm as we find with the laws forbidding alcohol and cigarettes.

A recent BBC News article explored this issue from the experience from the point of view of two victims of arranged child marriage, one of whom pointed out that at age 16 she didn’t realise that she was being coerced and that it should have been the duty of every adult to safeguard her.

This new law should make teenagers much less likely to go through this as most parents will not be prepared to break U.K. law for the sake of tradition.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

this material is a useful update to the marriage and divorce topics and childhood topics within the families and household option, usually taught as part of the AQA’s A-Level sociology in the first year of study.

Sources/ Find out More

The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022.

Ageing in the UK…

By 2066 5 million people in the UK will be aged over 85 and over, or 7% of the population.

11 million people in the UK were aged 65 and over in 2022, which is 19% of the population. In 10 years time, by 2032 this will have increased to 13 million people, or 23% of the population.

Currently 1.5 million people are aged 85 and over, or around 1.5% of the UK population. This older age group is the fastest growing and is set to double to 3.2 million by 2041 and treble by 2066 to 5.1 million when it will represent 7% of the UK population.

Health and ageing

In terms of disability-free life expectancy, the state of ageing in England is getting worse. Life Expectancy has increased, but disability free life expectancy hasn’t kept pace: as people get older they are spending proportionately more time in ill-health.

In 2020, healthy life expectancy was 62.4 years for men and 60.9 years for women.

This means that on average men and women can expect to live 10 disability-free years after the age of 65, with around a further 8 with some kind of disability, on average, based on average life expectancy at birth.

Poverty and ageing

18% of Pensioners lived in relative poverty in 2020/21 a sharp rise up from 16% in 2018/19, which equates to 2 million people.

Housing and ageing

In 2018 78% of households headed by someone aged 65 or over were owned, with only 6% of those having a mortgage.

16% of households headed by someone aged 65 or over socially rent, while 6% privately rent.

If we look at figures for the over 55s we see that the number of 867 000 homes rented privately to people aged 55 and over, which is an all time hight for the decade.

Ageing and Inequality

Taken together there has been a trend towards greater inequality between older people.

The net (non-pension) wealth of the richest 20% of people aged 65 and over
group doubled between 2002 and 2018, while that of the poorest 20% fell by 30%.12, and this is largely driven by the increase in house prices.

Work and Ageing

The economic inactivity rate for 50-64 year olds increased sightly during the Pandemic, after several years of declining. In 2021 the economic inactivity rate was 24% for men and 33% for women.

Policy Suggestions for an ageing population

There are several practical policy solutions we can start putting in place now to address the challenges of an ageing population.

One OBVIOUS. and necessary starting point would be more social housing for older people of a decent standard – and if this was developed as community housing this would also solve the problem of many older people being isolated in their own homes, AND such housing could be built in areas with decent health care systems nearby.

A second area would be to tackle age discrimination in work and offer more targeted support for older people wanting to go back to work – many people want to work into their 70s, but not necessarily full-time, so anything the government can do to encourage workplaces to offer more flexible part-time working arrangements would be a help.

The ageing population: Why this Matters!

There are a lot of people aged 45-60 who are going to be retiring in the next 20 years – that large bulge just above the grey line below. And once we get below this line you’ll see a couple of significant dips in the birth rate.

So this means that over the next 20 years there are going to me MORE over 65s and especially more over 85s while at the same time fewer working age people paying tax to support growing number of retirees.

Thus if we don’t start working now to put policies and infrastructure in place to help support those older people who need it, we are going to find this even more challenging in the future as the future is going to be one of more older people and less money to support them!

Signposting

This material should be useful for anyone studying the families and households option as part of their A-level in Sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

Age UK: Later Life in the United Kingdom 2019

Centre for Better Ageing: The State of Ageing 2022.

Office for National Statistics: UK interactive population pyramid