Expert warns that deaths will soon outnumber births in the UK: ‘Serious challenges for public finances’

Experts have predicted that the UK is on the brink of seeing deaths outnumber births for the first time.

This is the warning of the left-leaning think thank Resolution Foundation which aims to improve living standards.

It’s research director Gregory Thwaites told The Telegraph that 2026 may be the first year of a ‘new normal’ where this is the case.

He believes it is being driven by ‘extremely low fertility and not especially high deaths’.

Figures show births have outnumbered deaths for most of the last century, with the exemption of 1976, pandemic year 2020, and 2023. 

But worrying data released last year revealed that births only narrowly outnumbered deaths in 2024.

The think tank has predicted ‘an even narrower margin in 2025’ and warned that deaths could outnumber births by 100,000 annually by the mid-2040s.

The UK’s birth rate has fallen from three per woman in the 1960s to 1.4 last year, concerning experts.

If the downward trend continues, it could pose serious challenges for public finances, with a smaller working-age group having to pay for an aging population. 

Mr Thwaites said: ‘We’re already moving to this situation where the Government is, to a large extent, paying for older people, and spending on people of working age or children is being concentrated on a smaller fraction of those populations as well.’

However, he added that the Government may be able to save some money on education as the number of children falls.

But the amount of cash it is having to spend on pensions and healthcare is already rising as the older population grows.

The shift would prompt ‘hard questions for the future of our public services and tax revenues needed to fund them in an aging society,’ added Ruth Curtice, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. 

The UK population increased from 64.6 million in 2014 to 69.3 million in mid-2025, with immigration causing the majority of the increase. 

Without a rise in net migration to grow the working-age population, Britons could face the threat of ever-rising taxes, says Mr Thwaites.

‘All of the rise in population, if we want one in the future, will have to come from immigration because there’s no increase in birth over deaths,’ he said. 

Earlier this year, Britain’s fertility rates were laid bare as stark ONS figures revealed birth rates across the country were at their lowest since records began.

Figures showed the fertility rate – the average number of children a woman has – in England and Wales fell to 1.41 in 2024, the lowest figure since records began in 1938.

For a population to stay the same size without relying on immigration, nations must achieve a ‘replacement’ level fertility rate of 2.1.

Yet scientists studying the demographic phenomenon – dubbed the ‘greatest risk to the future of civilisation’ by Elon Musk – claim the real target should be upped to 2.7 to avoid extinction.

But not a single one of the 320-plus authorities in both England and Wales had a fertility rate that is above ‘replacement level’, according to the ONS.

Experts believe the trend is partly down to women focusing on their education and careers and couples waiting to have children until later in life.

Lifestyle factors like the rising prevalence of obesity in many countries, is also thought to be having a downward impact on fertility.