State pension age could rise to 75 due to birth rate drop | UK | News
The retirement age could be raised to 75 if nothing is done to tackle Britain’s falling birth rate, experts have warned. According to the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), around three million women across the UK are on track to never have children if the current demographic structure continues.
Its latest analysis shows that if cases occur, the country would see 600,000 fewer births than previous generations of British women.
The report identifies numerous factors contributing to this sea change; These include declines in marriage rates, women starting families at older ages, and young men taking longer to reach traditional markers of adulthood.
CSJ explained that encouraging men to marry and enter the workforce at younger ages could reverse these trends. He also advocates “pro-natalist” measures such as tax breaks that would make having children more financially viable for couples, according to reports Great Britain News.
While the think tank emphasizes that addressing the decline in marriage rates is a primary focus, financial incentives alone cannot overcome underlying cultural changes.
One of the main concerns of the analysis is that the CSJ also believes that persistently low fertility rates may force the Government to raise the retirement age to 75 by 2039 to maintain the ratio of current workers to retirees.
According to the analysis, the retirement age would need to rise to support 280 retirees per 1,000 working-age people.
Former Conservative MP Miriam Cates, Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Justice, who supported the report, said: “Millions of women still hope to start a family, but modern life is making this dream even more unattainable.
“We need to stop treating families as an afterthought and do more to support women who want to become mothers.”
He added that the effects of women not being able to have the families they desire go beyond personal heartbreak and cause wider social and economic damage, and called on policymakers to make family formation a national priority.
