demography

The group was founded in 2001 by a former UK ambassador, Lord Green, and an Oxford demography professor, David Coleman.

“Demography,” these left-wing optimists liked to say, “is destiny.”

Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who specialises in Latino voting trends, told the BBC that the problem with “demography is destiny” was that it risked treating all non-white Americans as an “aggrieved racial minority”.

Declining fertility rates are not just about people delaying parenthood, but about a growing trend of people not having children, says Brienna Perelli-Harris, professor of demography at the University of Southampton.

But policies to encourage people to have more children, such as loans or tax incentives, "are not only expensive but have limited evidence they will raise the overall fertility rate", said Melinda Mills, a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford.