Too many boys in U.K.

Press, 1 July 1978, Page 12

Too many boys in U.K.

From the “Economist,” London

A boy glut? More boys than girls are bom in Britain. in the ratio of qbout 106 to 100. But the surplus of males gradually disappears through life, mainly because they die younger in their beds or in accidents, and periodically go to war. There are only about three old men left to every 10 old women. The important chanue that

has crept into the structure of Britain’s population almost unobserved — or at least unremarked upon until the publication of an official demographic review last week — is that the age at which women begin to outnumber men has got progressively higher and is expected to get higher still Very young men may continue to kill themselves in motor accidents, especially on motor bicycles: but at the commonest age for marriage (20-24) there are 5 per cent more men than women. The women do not catch un men in numbers until after the age of 45. “This had led." says the report, “to a scarcity of young marriageable women relative to the number of young marriageable men in the population.” Before and during the Second World War demographers used to talk about Britain’s “accumulated stock of spinsters.” There is no such stock today. Together with the control of their fertility that the pill and easier abortion have given modem women, their better chance of marriage, of not being left on the shelf, is of great social importance. It means that women are more able to pick and choose, not just their husbands. but also when they will mam. when they will have children and when they will return to employment. It also means that occupations traditionally dependent on a stock of spinsters —

nursing, for instance, and teaching — have had to recast themselves.

The unmarried daughter of a generation ago, who looked after her aged parents, is probably now a geriatric problem with no immediate family to care for her. - The authors of the review wisely refrain from forecasting births, the number of which will be the main determinant of the future size and structure of the population — though there is still scope for a further fall in mortality. But they stick their necks out to the extent of declaring that the small family is here to stay. This is not inconsistent with the belief that the number of births may well increase in the 1980 s, when the women bom in the high birth years 1955-64 will reach the age of high fertility. The large number of babies born then is making the working population younger. This rise in the number of young earners, with their present attitudes to family size and timing, will affect the demand for housing.

The effect of changes in the number of births has been seen, first, in the provision of maternity beds, then in education. As the recent small numbers of children bom pass through the schools and higher education. the next changes can be foreseen. How manv people are preparing for them?