Births and fertility rates

The total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if birth rates stayed the same as in that year.

In 2024, the UK's fertility rate was 1.40 children per woman, the lowest on record. It was 2.95 at the peak of the baby boom, in 1964. Rates fell below 2.1 — the so-called "replacement rate", which is the level at which each generation replaces itself without migration — in 1973.

The rate rose in the 2000s, to 1.92 in 2010, but has fallen almost every year since 2012.

Fertility rates are falling in all parts of the UK.

In 2025, the rate was 1.39 in England and Wales, the lowest since records began, and 1.23 in Scotland, which also a record low.

Northern Ireland has the highest rate at 1.61 births per woman. But it has also fallen the most, down from 2.78 in 1974, when the data starts.

649,000 babies were born in the UK in 2025, the fewest since at least 1887, when records for all of today's UK begin.

Births peaked at 1.13 million in 1920, after the First World War, and reached another peak of just over 1 million in 1964.

The birth rate is the number of births per 1,000 people in the total population. Unlike the fertility rate, it also depends on how many people are of childbearing age.

In England and Wales, the birth rate peaked at 36 per 1,000 people in 1876, and fell sharply in the decades that followed. It was 9.4 in 2025, the lowest on record.

Women are having children later. In England and Wales, women in their early thirties now have the highest fertility rate of any age group. Before the early 2000s, it was women in their twenties. Births to teenage mothers have fallen steeply.

Births to women aged 40 and over are far more common than in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 2025, 27% of babies were born to mothers aged 35 or over, up from 6% in 1977.

What age are women at the time of their first birth?

In 2025, the average age of mothers in England and Wales at their first birth was 29.6, up from 23.7 in 1969.

The average age of mothers across all births was 31.1 years.

What share of births come from IVF treatment?

In 2024, about 21,000 babies were born in the UK after IVF treatment, which was around 3.2% of all births.

That share has more than doubled since 2000, when it was 1.3%.

Almost half of babies in England are now delivered by caesarean section (or "C-section"). 45% of deliveries in 2025 were from c-sections, up from 9% in 1980.

Rates are similar in the other nations across the UK.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) doesn't publish data on fertility rates by ethnic background, but it does by the mother's country of birth in census years.

In 2021, women in England and Wales who were born in the UK had a fertility rate of 1.49. This was lower than rates among women born abroad, at 1.68.

Fertility rates were highest for women born in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (at around 3), and lowest for those born in China (0.78) and Italy (1.08).

Rates have fallen for most groups since 2001. For women born in Pakistan, the rate fell from 4.57 to 2.92, and for those born in Somalia from 5.91 to 2.41.

No nation in the UK publishes fertility rates by household income, but Scotland does publish data on fertility rates by the deprivation level of different areas. This data is shown in the chart.

Women in Scotland's most deprived areas have the highest fertility rate: 1.35 in 2025, compared with 1.16 in the least deprived areas. The gap has narrowed since 2001.

How do fertility rates compare across the UK? Rates by local authority are shown on the map.

Rates are lowest in university cities and central London, where women are typically younger. They were below 1.0 in Cambridge, Westminster and Islington, Edinburgh, and Brighton and Hove.

They were highest in Mid Ulster (1.98) and other parts of Northern Ireland, and in Luton and Pendle (1.93), Oldham (1.87) and Bradford (1.84).

Is the UK's fertility rate high or low compared to other high-income countries? This comparison is shown in the chart.

In 2024, the UK's rate was similar to Germany and the Netherlands, and lower than in France and the United States.

Rates are much lower in South Korea, Spain, Japan, and Italy.

Births are counted from birth registrations, which are compulsory: ONS records births in England and Wales, National Records of Scotland (NRS) in Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) in Northern Ireland. Figures are for births to mothers who live in each nation, counted in the year the baby was born.

Fertility rates divide births to women of each age by the number of women of that age, from population estimates. They are revised when population estimates change, for example after a census. The UK rate from 1974 is calculated for this page from the three nations' births and ONS's latest population estimates, because ONS stopped publishing a UK rate after 2021.

IVF births come from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which licenses fertility clinics and records every treatment cycle. Caesarean births come from hospital records, published separately by each UK nation.

International comparisons use the World Bank's figures, from national statistical offices. For the UK, the World Bank uses UN estimates, which are higher than the official rate, so the UK figures here are the official ones instead.