Alice Goisis, a professor of demography at University College London, says: “There is research indicating more young people are planning to remain childless, which suggests that the recent decline in fertility rates at young ages isn’t just about individuals delaying parenthood until they’re older.”
Wealth advisers are already starting to see these demographic changes play out.
“In the last five years, we’re coming across more and more clients in those sorts of situations,” says Malvee Vaja, of Rathbones, the wealth manager.
“I’m either speaking to younger people who are the only grandchild on both sides, and I’m also speaking to older clients who are what is commonly referred to as Sinks or Dinks, so ‘single-income no kids’ or ‘dual-income no kids’,” she adds.
Natasha Percy-Baxter at St James’s Place says she has noticed growing numbers of clients who have millennial children on the fence about starting a family.
After helping them on to the property ladder, their focus is increasingly shifting.
“I’m starting to slowly see the next step is actually being able to fund creating a family for their children,” says Percy-Baxter. “So that could be contributing towards IVF privately as opposed to doing it with the NHS because of age restrictions or how many times you can do it.
“Beyond that, if and when they do have children, it’s being able to prove financial support around things like private school fees for their grandchildren.”
Percy-Baxter adds that clients who have children and grandchildren tend to be more careful with their finances to leave room for inheritance, with the expectation that this will one day be reciprocated.
However, demographers warn that future generations of so-called Sinks and Dinks living into old age will still need young people to staff crucial infrastructure such as care homes, as well as shops and restaurants.
“This will have massive consequences for social care,” says University College London’s Goisis. “The government will need to plan for these demographic changes and build an infrastructure that can compensate for having smaller families or perhaps not having family around.
“The loneliness epidemic is also a potential concern. We need to rethink how we organise space and cities to enable people with smaller families or no families to interact with one another to prevent loneliness.”
Oxford University’s Morland adds that while politicians can use immigration to offset such trends, this is not a sustainable method.
“I do think that if people don’t want mass immigration but they’re not prepared to have children, they’re not being consistent,” he says. “They want workers, they want people to look after them, they want the economy to function but they’re not prepared to produce the labour of future generations.”
Morland, who is about to become a grandfather for the third time, adds: “Talking about the romance of grandparenthood, I just had my grandson stay last night and took him to nursery this morning.
“It’s all wonderful and marvellous. I get very poetic about it. But if you get to [South] Korean levels where each generation is a third of the size of the one above, there’s a lot more at stake than the romance of grandparenthood.”