One in four young people look set never to have children, a new paper from the Iona Institute forecasts. The paper is called ‘Choice or Circumstance? Rising Childlessness in Ireland’.
This would be the highest percentage of childless people ever recorded in Ireland and coincides with both the marriage rate and the birth rate for the country falling to their lowest ever levels. As the number of births continues to decline, the number of people aged 65 and over will soon surpass the number of children aged 14 and under with the gap widening over time.
The report charts a huge increase in the number of women still childless by age 30. Among those born in the late 1950s, only 30.9% were childless at age 30. Among those born in the early 1990s, the number had increased to 63.6%.
Commenting on the report, Breda O’Brien, a spokesperson for The Iona Institute said: “Once upon a time, we used to worry about people having more children than they planned, but now we need to start worrying much more about them having fewer than they wish for, and in many cases, having none at all, and consider the amount of pain and distress this will cause”.
She continued: “A situation in which people are having fewer children than they planned for, and in a growing number of cases will end up childless, is a personal tragedy, but also has very significant social and economic consequences because of the effects of an ageing population and growing loneliness”.
She added: “As a society, we need to debate why this is happening. Is it purely a result of the high cost of living, or is it also because young people are today often encouraged to put off starting a family until they are well into their 30s, by which time it might be too late? One way or the other, it is a phenomenon we should discuss far more widely if our aim is to help people to achieve their eventual life goals”.