Some londoners dream of retiring to cottages by the sea. But Nick Sanderson, the chief executive of Audley Group, believes that desires are shifting. His company has built flats for retirees in Clapham, in south London, and will soon start building 150 more in Brent Cross, in the north-west of the city. It hopes to create a retirement village in Canada Water, in the east London docklands. “Why would you choose to go and live out in the middle of nowhere?” he asks.
London’s population is certainly altering. Between 2011 and 2023 the median age of its inhabitants rose by two years, from just under 34 to just under 36. Although the city is younger than England and Wales as a whole, it is ageing more than twice as quickly. Compared with cities like Exeter, Manchester and Nottingham, which have universities and relatively cheap homes, it seems decidedly creaky (see chart).
A report published last month by the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, suggests that three changes are responsible for this trend. London has fewer babies than it used to. Young adults make up a smaller share of its population than in the past. And the ranks of the middle-aged and old are swelling.
London experienced a remarkable baby boom in the first decade of this century. Since then it has suffered a crash. Between 2010 and 2023 the capital’s fertility rate, which is expressed as the number of births per woman, fell from 2.0 to 1.4—a slightly faster decline than in England and Wales as a whole. The fertility rate in inner London is 1.2, close to the national levels in Italy and Japan, two rich countries that are well known for their rapidly ageing populations. Around the capital, primary schools are closing.
The shortage of young adults might not be quite as acute as official statistics suggest. Recent population estimates are influenced by the last census, which was conducted in the covid-ravaged month of March 2021. Around that time, some young people abandoned their cramped city-centre flats for suburbia. Now that covid is a mere nuisance, and more employers are insisting that people work in the office, a portion may have crept back into the city, unnoticed by statisticians.
But perhaps not a large portion. The pandemic, and the rise in home-working that it triggered, wiped out some of the retail and hospitality jobs that used to draw young people to London. An index of transactions at Pret, a sandwich chain, shows that sales in shops serving London’s city workers were just 63% of pre-pandemic levels last October.
Maybe it’s because I’m a pensioner
Immigrants, who are often young, seem to be shunning the capital for cheaper places outside the city limits, such as Thurrock to the east and Watford to the north. Between 2011 and 2021 the proportion of foreign-born people in Newham, an ethnically diverse borough of inner London, was flat. In Lambeth, another inner London borough, the share fell. When Britain left the EU in 2020 it created an immigration system that favours health and care workers. Health and care jobs can be found all over the country, not just in London.
The baby bust might end; young adults could return to the city. By contrast, the rise of middle-aged and old people appears to be inexorable. The Greater London Authority (GLA), which oversees the capital, estimates that the number of people aged 50 or over rose by more than 400,000 between 2014 and 2024, accounting for more than four-fifths of overall population growth in the city. The GLA expects similar growth over the next decade. Parts of suburban London, such as Richmond upon Thames, in the west, are greying at high speed.
“The culture has changed,” argues Patrick Devlin, an architect who designs retirement homes, among other buildings. The desire to move to a seaside bungalow is giving way to the desire to live near friends and cultural amenities. London is exceptionally well supplied with the latter, and with superb public transport, which can be ridden gratis by Londoners from the age of 60 (elsewhere people must wait until 66). Despite the paranoid rants of some American populists, the city has grown safe. Cumbria and Hampshire have higher rates of violent crime.
“It’s a more pleasant city to live in—if you have the money,” says Richard Brown, a London-watcher. Middle-aged and old Londoners often do have the money, or at least the wealth, because they bought their homes when prices were more reasonable than they are today. Others settle as close to the city as they can, and commute when they must.
In the long run, the fact that London is such a hard place for children and young adults should be concerning, because it suggests that the city could gradually become less exciting and dynamic. For now, however, there is a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, and a bus is pulling up. Where’s that free pass? ■
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