Deaths of British-born people outstripped deaths to British born mothers for only the third time since records began in 1838.
There were only 471,476 live births to British-born mothers in England and Wales in 2018, compared to 487,618 deaths of British-born people, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures reported by The Telegraph.
Deaths of British-born people have only outnumbered births to British-born people twice before, according to the ONS, in years of significantly greater economic turmoil than the country faces today — namely 1976 and 1977.
Fertility rates for British-born women have been declining year on year, having fallen from 1.71 children per woman in 2017 to 1.63 per woman in 2018; a nadir since statistics began being tracked officially in 2004.
Overall, however, the number of births in the United Kingdom is still ahead of the number of deaths by some 115,487 — thanks to births to foreign-born mothers.
Such mothers accounted for the vast majority of births in some of Britain’s more multicultural areas, wtih 75.4 per cent of children in born in Brent, London being the offspring of women born outside the country, for example.
ONS statistician Kathryn Littleboy said that Poland and Pakistan “remain the most common countries of birth for non-UK-born mothers and fathers respectively”, although Romania has surged ahead to become “the second most common country of birth for non-UK-born fathers and the third for non-UK-born mothers” since the European Union brought it into its Free Movement migration regime in 2014.
Despite voting to Leave the European Union all the way back in 2016, the United Kingdom is for now still a member of the bloc, and still subject to unlimited and effectively unvetted immigration from EU member-states — indeed, Free Movement to Britain has even been extended to Croatia since the referendum took place.
Britain’s opposition Labour Party, led by far leftist Jeremy Corbyn, has pledged to not only maintain Free Movement with the European Union if it attains office, but to also to allow free movement from the wider world, as well — and to allow all non-citizen migrants to vote in British elections.