Record baby boom swells Britain's population

LONDON: Britain's population has grown to over 61 million fuelled by the biggest baby boom in three decades, despite a slump in immigrant numbers
due to the global recession, data showed Thursday.

The vast wave of immigrants from eastern Europe who have poured into Britain in recent years are now returning home, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

But the fertility rate has surged, with over 750,000 babies born last year -- many of them to recent immigrants -- producing the biggest year-on-year increase in population since the 1960s.

For the first time in nearly 10 years birth and death rates overtook immigration as the main driver of population growth. Half the increase in births was due to births to women who were born outside Britain.

"It's the highest fertility rate we have seen in the UK for some time," said ONS statistician Roma Chappell. "You have to go all the way back to 1973 to find a time when the fertility rate went higher.

"For the first time in a decade natural change exceeded net migration as the main driver of population change.”

Britain -- which enjoyed a decade-long boom before the global credit crunch and subsequent economic crisis -- saw a massive influx of immigrants from central and eastern European countries which joined the European Union in 2004.

But the sharp downturn has hit Britain harder than some of its European neighbours, triggering soaring job losses which have driven Polish and other workers to contemplate returning to their homeland.
Source::Times of India