Isle of Man birth rate sees decade of 'extraordinary' decline

The number of births in 2020 was 660 compared to more than 1,000 a decade ago

The number of births on the Isle of Man across the last decade has seen an "extraordinary rate of decline", a demographer has said.

Author Paul Craine has been tracking local trends for more than 30 years.

It follows the government's recent publication of the Isle of Man in Numbers 2021 document.

Mr Craine said the annual birth rate had been at over a thousand in 2010 but the figure had fallen 35.5% over 10 years, to 660 in 2020.

"That is a third of the births down, so that is an extraordinary rate of decline," said Mr Craine, who wrote the Isle of Man Population Atlas.

"The greatest worry about that is it's because the young adults in the workforce are leaving.

"Between 2011 and 2016 the number of people aged under 65 fell by 3,400, and that's an enormous decline in the working population."

Population decline

The number of deaths, which Mr Craine said had been relatively constant, overtook the number of births in 2015 and had continued at that rate ever since.

He continued: "Overall in 2020 we had the highest number of deaths this century in the Isle of Man."

This may have been down to deaths from Covid-19 and others who did not get the treatments they might otherwise have sought, he said.

However, Mr Craine said the data from the first half of 2021 showed deaths on the whole were down compared to the same time last year, something he described as "a more positive side" to the numbers.

The pandemic would have undoubtedly affected migration and natural population change, he said.

But he added it would be "perhaps another year or two" before trends from the pandemic became fully clear.

The Isle of Man Census will be published next year.