DEMOGRAPHICS AND PUBLIC SERVICES | IN FOCUS
COPING WITH A POPULATION BULGE
DEMOGRAPHICS AND PUBLIC SERVICES
The UK population is growing while, at the same time, Britons are becoming bigger and older. This places increasing strains on services such as health, education and housing – and highlights why the CBI is calling for a larger role for the private sector in the delivery of public services.
Britain is getting bigger. The population of the UK, which has grown steadily over the last five decades, is forecast to grow by another 10 million to 73 million – a 15 per cent increase – over the next quarter of a century. The most recent census in 2011 put the UK population at 63.18 million, an increase of more than 10 million from the 52.81 million recorded in 1961. In other words the growth rate in the population looks set to double if the forecasts by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) turn out to be correct. While a growing population is a good thing,
it puts pressure on policymakers in a number of areas. From an economic viewpoint it means that more people will join the labour force each year, which in turn means the country needs to create more jobs. It also puts more pressure on public services such as health, education and housing,
As Britain’s population grows (opposite), it faces the challenges of an ageing population (right)
as a growing number of families need to be housed, their children found a school place and medical treatment made available at their GP surgery or hospital when they fall ill. This can lead to social tensions, particularly
when there has been a large increase in immigration, as there has been in the UK over the past 50 years. It has become particularly marked in the decade since 2004, when eight new countries joined the European Union and their citizens gained the right to come to the UK. The ONS figures show that, of the forecast
9.6 million increase in population by 2037, 4.2 million or 43 per cent will be made up of new migrants minus those leaving the country. While the remaining 5.4 million come from the “projected natural increase” – the fact that there are more births than death – the children of migrants account for almost a third of that increase. Britain is becoming more diverse.
OLDER … AND FATTER As well as getting more diverse, Britain is becoming older. There are now around 10.3 million people aged 65 and over in the UK. That is an 80 per cent increase compared with 1951. Over those six decades the share of much older people has risen dramatically thanks to the benefits of healthier lifestyles and higher quality healthcare. The number
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of pensioners aged 85 or older has jumped from one in 25 to one in seven. Indeed the number of people over the age of 85 in the UK is expected to more than double over the next 25 years. A report by a House of Lords committee identifies how England will see a 51 per cent rise in those aged over 65 and a doubling of those aged 85 and over between 2010 and 2030. Meanwhile obesity is becoming a major
problem in the UK: around a quarter of adults are now obese. According to official figures there was a marked increase in the proportion of adults in England that were obese between 1993 and 2012, from 13.2 per cent to 24.4 per »
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