The changing face of the UK

I've just read an interesting article on the BBC web site summarising the latest set of statistics which show how the UK is changing demographically. The data compares 2008 to 1971, the year in which Husbandio was born, and the year before I was born. Some elements are unsurprising (for example that there are now fewer households containing dependent children), but it's the extent of the change that raises an eyebrow. As regards the households with dependent children, for example, the percentage has fallen from more than half of all households (looks like about 52% on the chart) to only just over a third (around 36%). That's a massive change, largely accounted for by the growth in the percentage of households containing couples but no kids (up from 19% to 25%) and of single person households (up from 6% to 12%).

Clearly this creates a dilemma for society - we hear concerns about an increasing lack of respect from "da yoof", old people being scared of gangs of hoodies, and falling educational standards in schools. But then, if a smaller percentage of households contain dependent kids, why should we expect an increasing focus on child-related issues? It's a dangerous road to go down from a government policy perspective, since this data does of course show percentages not actual numbers. But if we don't help people to bring their kids up with a sense of responsibility for themselves and their communities then, IMHO, we've missed the whole point. I think the concept of community demands a post of its own really (or even more than one!), but the trouble is that it's very difficult to analyse how our sense of community is evolving, which it is certainly doing. And these stats don't help with that.

But back to the stats. The other irony they illustrate is that people seem to want to cling on to their child status for longer, either through desire or necessity. Apparently, almost a third of men and a fifth of women aged between 20 and 34 live at home with their parents, with children aged 20 to 24 particularly likely to remain in the family home. Those are massive numbers! I think that's changed significantly even over the last ten years - apart from a few months here and there I didn't really live at home after the age of 18, since I was either at uni or travelling. When I finished travelling I was at home for about nine months I guess, but then I moved in with Husbandio (or Boyfriendio, as he then was!) and we got married when we were both 25. I can't recall any of my friends living with their parents at that age, let alone up to the age of 34. But then again, property prices weren't as ridiculous then as they later became, and that must have been a massive influence on that statistic.

There are also some really sad stats - for example that a third of families live in "non-decent" housing which fail to meet minimum statutory requirements. One third - that's shocking in a developed, so-called first world country. And that lone parent households now account for 11% of all households, up from 4% in 1971. But then again, as I can attest, better to have two parents living separately but happily, than together but miserably. The trouble is, this data doesn't help us measure happiness - although that was done once in an earlier survey, which showed that the proportion of people in the UK claiming to be very happy fell from 52% in 1957 to just 36% in 2006. And that was before a global economic depression - wonder what those figures would be like now?! Knowing us Brits, we're probably happier now that things are going badly - it's that Blitz spirit shining through!