The first thing you need to know about the so-called demographic timebomb facing countries such as the UK and US is to never call it that.
With birth rates continuing to decline in both nations, it is tempting to use the timebomb term. However, it is greatly disliked by demographers, the experts that study population change.
“Number one, I hate the phrase,” says Sarah Harper, professor of gerontology (the study of the impact of aging) at the University of Oxford.
“I do not think there is a demographic timebomb, it is part of the demographic transition. We knew this was going to happen, and happen across the 21st Century. So, it is not unexpected, and we should have been preparing for this for some time.”
However, the scale of the problem is immense. For a country to increase or maintain its population it needs a birth rate of between 2.1 and 2.4 children per woman, on average. This is known as the “replacement rate”.
