Can science predict Scottish independence? Demography offers fascinating insight on country’s future
Dr Paul Morland is the UK’s leading demographer – an expert on trends in human society. Here he talks to our Writer at Large about the grim outlook for Scotland and the rest of the UK, what demography means for the constitution, the decline of the West and why the future looks likely to be one dependent on mass immigration
IF demographics is destiny, then fate may have it in for Scotland. Demographics – the study of human populations, and what figures on age, births and deaths say about where society is headed – has a rather harsh story to tell when it comes to Scotland’s future. Just ask Dr Paul Morland, the nation’s leading demographer.
Morland has just brought out an essential guide to what demography reveals about the coming years of the 21st century called Tomorrow’s People: The Future Of Humanity In Ten Numbers. His thesis is stark: in the West, birth rates are failing, populations are ageing, and we either embrace mass immigration or drift into terminal decline. When it comes to Britain, the numbers are even more brutal for Scotland than the rest of the UK. Those statistics also play into the biggest political question facing the nation: the choice between independence or the union. The Herald on Sunday sat down with Morland, a scholar at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, to discover just what destiny demography has in store for us.
The greying of UK
“THROUGHOUT the developed world,” he says, “countries are about to face the consequences of low fertility. In the UK, women have been having fewer than two children each for the best part of half a century.” The number two is key. In demography, it’s the effective “replacement level”. If people have less than two children, societies decline. The result: an ageing population where the number of elderly who don’t work outstrips the young who do. Soon, nations become top heavy with age, and there’s just not enough money for societies to function properly.
In Britain, that means “more people [are] likely to die than be born before many more years have passed”. Immigration has slowed decline in Britain. Morland says: “Brexit has certainly choked off inflows from the EU, but so far they’ve been supplemented by more arrivals from beyond. All the while, the UK Government talks of tougher migration restrictions. If they’re serious, we’re going to see population decline along with ongoing ageing. We’ll notice our smaller towns empty out and abandoned properties rot as is common already in parts of Japan.”
Demographically, Japan is a basket case with a rapidly greying population and low immigration.
“We’ll notice when we can’t fill up our cars because we’ve run out of tanker drivers, or we can’t get our taps fixed because we’ve run out of plumbers, or there’s nobody to look after mum in the care home or dad in the hospital or little Jimmy and Jemima in the playgroup.”
Scotland in trouble
“SCOTLAND,” says Morland, “is like the rest of the UK but more so. Its fertility rate is lower – it’s now below 1.3 children per woman while the rest of the country is just below 1.6. This means that Scots have even fewer children than the famously cradlephobic Japanese. And while life expectancy for the UK as a whole is about 79 for men and