Expert comment: Why are people in the UK waiting so long to have children?

Fertility in the U.K. is low with only 1.6 children per woman in 2020 (The World Bank 2022). While this is partly driven by people choosing to have fewer children, there is a disparity between how many children people want and how many they go on to have—the "fertility gap." Dr. Paula Sheppard, a Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University's School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, discusses the reasons behind this: