What happens when Britain's population starts to shrink?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
The Office for National Statistics has said that by 2029 it expects more deaths than births in Britain. Simultaneously migration could go into reverse soon, with more people leaving our shores than arriving. But how will a shrinking - and ageing - population affect our politics, our economy and our lives?
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Guest: Tom Calver, Data Editor, The Times and The Sunday Times
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Olivia Case.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:08.0 | As recently as 2009, Britain was booming. |
| 0:16.0 | Baby booming. |
| 0:18.0 | It's a baby boom that mirrors the late 40s and early 60s. It's helped push the |
| 0:22.8 | British population above 61 million for the first time. And that burgeoning population wasn't |
| 0:28.8 | just the result of birth rates. Over the decades that preceded it, the UK had experienced |
| 0:34.4 | waves of immigration, like Windrush, which began in the late 1940s. |
| 0:40.3 | Genoa, Friday last, the Lina-Ipurnia, sails in for the Caribbean. |
| 0:45.3 | How old are you? |
| 0:46.3 | 18 years. |
| 0:47.3 | Where are you going to stay when you come to England? |
| 0:50.3 | Going in a house, it does. |
| 0:51.3 | You're going to nurse? |
| 0:53.3 | Yes. We also saw waves of immigration from other parts of the world, |
| 0:57.2 | from the Commonwealth which Britain created, |
| 0:59.6 | and from the European Union while we were still a part of it. |
| 1:02.4 | Polish is now the second language in the UK. |
| 1:05.0 | Punjabi is the third and Urdu is the fourth. |
| 1:08.0 | Immigrants bring into our economy 1.2 billion pounds more than they take out in benefits. |
| 1:13.8 | But now, that period of population growth appears to have become a period of decline. |
| 1:24.4 | Tom Calver, the data editor at the Times and the Sunday Times, has been taking a closer look. |
... |
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