Births in England and Wales peaked in the year after the 2011 Census, before falling quickly in 2013 and 2014. In 2012 they had reached their highest total since 1972, and the total fertility rate, the number of children each woman was expected to have, hit 1.94, its highest point since 1973. By 2014 total fertility was down to 1.83. Fertility was not falling because there were fewer people of childbearing age; the mean age at which women were giving birth rose from 29.7 in 2011 to 30.2 in 2014, and the graph above shows that this increase has been accelerating. Births within marriage fell from 9.1% of married women under age 45 giving birth in 2011, to 8.8% in 2014. Those same figures for women of the same ages, but not in a marriage, fell from 5.2% to 5.0% over the same period. If marriage rates increase, births can rise, but many other factors influence how the population of the UK is changing.

All these statistics are readily available although difficult to access if you do not know where to look. These shown in the graph above come from the ONS ‘Birth summary tables, England and Wales 2014’, published in July 2015. Very little commentary and analysis of these tables is provided, however, and if you want to know what is happening across the UK as a whole, you need to find separate statistics for Northern Ireland and Scotland, and work out how to combine them.

The last detailed analysis of trends in cohabitation, marriage, age and number of births appeared in the autumn 2011 145th edition of Population Trends, and charted the situation up to 2007, almost a decade ago. A great deal has changed since then, but ongoing and growing government cuts to spending since 2010 mean that most key trends are no longer studied and reported on.

For 126 years, from 1849 through to 1975, the Registrar General published quarterly returns on aspects of the UK population.