British Population in the Twentieth Century

Even as late as the end of the nineteenth century the demography of Britain still retained many of the features characteristic of earlier times. Rates of population growth remained relatively high. A substantial proportion of the country's natural excess of births over deaths emigrated overseas. Average expectations of life, levels of fertility and patterns of nuptiality differed relatively little from those typical of the early years of the century. Changes in the internal geography of residence continued to favour northern rather than southern regions, urban rather than rural locations and core rather than more peripheral parts of the country. At various stages in the course of the last hundred years or so, the character of Britain's demography has altered dramatically. The transformation towards a modern demographic regime may have begun in the late nineteenth century. But it has been in the twentieth century, and particularly since the First World War, that the bulk of this transformation has taken place. Average life expectancies at birth have soared from around fifty years to well over seventy years. Rates of marital fertility have fallen to levels no longer sufficient to ensure replacement and, in the most recent decades, have been accompanied by unprecedented increases in the extent of divorce, extramarital cohabitation and illegitimacy. The geography of population location has altered in favour of southern rather than northern areas and small urban and rural communities at the expense of large urban centres. Most strikingly of all, under the impact of declining fertility, rates of population growth slumped to levels which, by the 1970s and 1980s, hovered around zero. In this study an attempt is made to explain why these changes have occurred and why the demography of Britain in the 1990s differs so markedly from that of the 1890s.