Impact – FertilityTrends

Media impact

Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘The mother of all problems: Why isn’t London having babies anymore?’, The Standard, 13 February 2025.
Dr. Bernice Kuang will speak on ‘Understanding fertility trends in the UK’ at the Hampshire Skeptics Society, 26 February 2025.
Dr. Sarah Christison was quoted in the article ‘How Scotland needs to buck global anti-immigration trend to ease pressure on public services’, The Scotsman, 26 January 2025.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘London has the highest birth rates among over-40s. But what’s driving the shift?’, Financial Times, 8 January 2025.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘Germany joins EU’s ‘ultra-low’ fertility club’, Financial Times, 24 December 2024. The story was reported across a further 16 media outlets.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ‘The crucial role of men in the decline in the global birth rate’, BBC News Mundo; 12 November 2024.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘Birth rate drops to record low in England and Wales‘, Financial Times; November 2024.
Dr. Bernice Kuang contributed to an article ‘The real reason for the rise in male childlessness‘, BBC InDepth, 1 November 2024.
Dr. Sarah Christison and Dr. Bernice Kuang presented at the ‘The future of families policy conference: Tackling long-term challenges’ hosted by Understanding Society, 31 October 2024.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘The baby bust: how Britain’s falling birthrate is creating alarm in the economy’, The Observer, 30 June 2024.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ‘The UK can’t afford to shatter dreams of parenthood’, The National, 9 April 2024.
Dr. Bernice Kuang contributed to a discussion on falling birth rates on BBC Radio 4 You and Yours programme (from 24 mins), 25 March 2024.
Dr. Bernice Kuang co-wrote the article ‘Fears about falling birthrate in England and Wales are misplaced – the population is due to grow for years to come’, The Conversation, 12 February 2024. It was also covered by Yahoo News, Tolerance.ca, Phys.org, University of Bath, Life Technology, MENAFN, and ForeignAffairs, 12-13 February 2024.
Dr Joanne Ellison presented ‘Projecting UK subnational fertility using Bayesian generalised additive models’ at the Royal Statistical Society International Conference, 5-7 September 2023.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘Post-pandemic baby ends as births fall to 20 year low‘ The Times, 17 August 2023.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ‘Meet the ‘elite’ couples breeding to save mankind‘, The Telegraph, 19 April 2023.
Professor Ann Berrington’s research on childlessness in the UK was mentioned in the article ‘Why a shortage of Mr Rights means single mothers hold the key to the falling birthrate’, The Observer, 11 February 2023.
Dr. Sarah Christison was quoted in the article ‘Scottish birth rate down by 20% in ‘uncertain times‘ in The Times, 25 January 2023.
Dr. Joanne Ellison was quoted in the article ‘What the Faroe Islands could teach Europe about fertility’, 31 December 2022.
Sonia Sodha’s article in The Guardian, 11 December 2022, ‘It’s not just ignorance that stops us having babies. It’s also poor relationships‘ refers to CPC Policy Briefing 29 ‘Educational differences in childbearing widen in Britain‘ and CPC Working Paper 69 ‘Childlessness in the UK‘.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in the article ‘Closures and cuts: the population crisis about to hit schools‘, Tes Magazine, 21 October 2022.
Dr. Sarah Christison was quoted in the article ‘Rural population swells as Aberdeen shrinks in pandemic – what does this trend tell us?‘, The Press and Journal, 14 July 2022.
Dr. Sarah Christison commented on city-rural population changes in the article ‘Covid reverses long-term population trend as rural areas benefit at expense of Scotland’s cities‘, The Scotsman, 14 July 2022.
Dr. Sarah Christison was quoted in the article ‘Why is Dundee’s population shrinking faster than central belt cities?‘, The Courier, 13 July 2022.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ‘More and more couples are choosing to live without children, but not because they don’t want them’, Slovenec, 12 May 2022.
Professor Ann Berrington and Dr. Joanne Ellison wrote an article looking at the ‘Effect of lockdowns on birth rates in the UK‘, The Conversation, 21 April 2022. Dr. Sarah Christison, Dr. Bernice Kuang and Professor Hill Kulu also contributed to this article.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in ‘Baby Bust: Can policymakers boost dwindling world fertility rates?‘, The Financial Times, 20 April 2022.
Our research was referenced in the article ‘Children of men: Are birth rates declining due to anti-natalism or economics?’, MerionWest, 3 March 2022.
Dr. Sarah Christison was quoted in the article ‘Insight: How worried should we be about Scotland’s falling birth rates and ageing population?‘, The Scotsman, 13 February 2022.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in an article ‘Half of women in England and Wales do not have children by age 30‘, The Financial Times, 27 January 2022.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ”Insensitive’: pet owners react to pope’s remarks on animals and children‘, The Guardian, 6 January 2022.
Our work looking at ‘Recent trends in UK fertility and potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic‘ was featured in an article by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) about ‘The impact of COVID-19 in pregnancy‘.
Research on declining birth rates was referenced in the article ‘Birth rate in England and Wales dropped by 4% last year as Covid hit’, The Independent, 14 October 2021.
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in the article ‘Women aren’t “forgetting” to have children. They can’t afford to’, Refinery29, 14 October 2021.
Previous work, led by Professor Ann Berrington, investigating whether and how the link between homeownership and entering parenthood has changed in Britain in recent decades has received a variety of media coverage:
- ‘Buying a house no longer comes before having children, researchers find‘, The Telegraph
- ‘New parents as likely to be in private rented housing as own homes‘, The Independent
- ‘Young less likely to own their home before starting a family‘, The Times
Dr. Bernice Kuang spoke to the news outlet Refinery29 about falling fertility and ‘The rise of the one-child family’.
Professor Ann Berrington was quoted in an article by The Telegraph, ‘England’s Euros success risks baby bust’.
Professor Hill Kulu commented on the lowest number of births recorded in Scotland in 2020 for an article in The Times, ‘Scotland marks lowest level of births in recorded history‘.
Our working paper looking at recent trends in UK fertility and potential impacts of COVID-19 received local, national and international media coverage including:
- ‘Britain’s falling birthrate will damage our society – and it’s not just Covid to blame‘, The Guardian.
- ‘Covid ‘baby bust’ fears as fertility rate falls to record low’, The Telegraph.
- ‘Generation childless: Has Covid caused a baby bust?‘, The Telegraph.
- ‘Britain must reverse the baby bust to avoid an Italian decline’, The Telegraph
Professor Jane Falkingham appeared on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme discussing population implications of women choosing a child-free life (listen from 20:42).
Dr. Bernice Kuang was quoted in an article by The Refinery, ‘The women who decided they don’t want children during the pandemic’.
Professor Ann Berrington commented on the falling birth rate in the UK as a result of the pandemic for an article in The Times, ‘Headache of having the kids at home puts brakes on birth rate‘.

Stakeholder impact

Dr. Sarah Christison met with writer and director Katherine Nesbitt who has secured funding from Creative Scotland to develop a verbatim theatre project exploring Scotland’s declining fertility rate. They discussed the drivers of fertility decline as well as wider issues related to population change and Scotland’s demographic challenges. This discussion along with others with experts in demography, economics and maternity care will form the basis for structuring the play along side conversations with focus groups made up of members of the public, February 2025.
Dr. Bernice Kuang co-convened a breakfast roundtable at the Labour Party Conference on ‘Understanding population change and the implications for the five missions’, 23 September 2024.
Professor Ann Berrington met with Sir Ian Diamond, Donna Ward (Director of strategic policy at Department for Education) and other senior researchers from ONS to discuss policy responses to demographic change in the UK, 26 April 2024.
Professor Hill Kulu presented ‘Fertility trends by birth order in Britain: The comparison between England and Wales, and Scotland’ at the 4th Annual Academy of the International Max Planck Research School (Population, Health, Data Science) in Rostock on 13 December 2022.
In collaboration with the Scottish Government Population Team, the FertilityTrends project team (Professor Hill Kulu, Professor Ann Berrington, Dr Bernice Kuang, Dr Sarah Christison, and Dr Joanne Ellison) presented at a ‘Fertility in Scotland’ workshop in Edinburgh on 29 November 2022. Workshop participants included invited guests from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), National Records of Scotland (NRS), and the Finnish Population Research Institue.
Professor Jane Falkingham, Professor Ann Berrington and Professor Hill Kulu discussed their research with UK government Permanent Secretaries and Sir Ian Diamond, National Statistician, 29 October 2021.
Professor Hill Kulu and Professor Ann Berrington contributed to the National Population Projections Expert Advisory Group meeting on 24 May 2021.
Dr. Joanne Ellison gave a presentation at the monthly ONS DMEG (Demographic Methods Expert Group) meeting on 12 April 2021 on ‘Combining data sources to develop a Bayesian projection model for England and Wales fertility’.