BBC Empire: don't discuss the birth rate

Today Programme, Friday 7 November 2008
Edward Stourton ws interviewing an economist on the effects of an aging population on our society over the next 20 years. He was saying that they would be immense. Intriguingly, Stourton offered two solutions: 1) more immigration; and 2) a change in work practices. Bravely, the economist said that the scale of immigration needed to solve the problem would be so great as to be unrealistic and that even at current levels it was causing social problems. They then concentrated on work practices, which seems to have some mileage.

The elephant in the room here is the declining birth rate and the proposal that we try to increase it. Why is this rather obvious alternative not even mentioned? This is not a left/right issue as the right have tended to ignore it; and in spite of 80’s feminism, many on the left admit that it would be beneficial to increase the birth rate. Polly Toynbee said that many women would like to have more children; a minister implied that we had a duty to have more children; left-of-centre think-tank noted that women in their 20’s were not having children.

The BBC as far as I am aware did not pick up on the pro-natalist report published by the Sky broadcaster, Colin Brazier for Civitas http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewAug08.pdf. So why we are so afraid of promoting something that many see as beneficial for the women of our society and good for society in the round?