The island’s birth rate has fallen to a level not seen since the end of the First World War.

It’s an extraordinary statistic and an alarming one for a government looking at demographics to grow the Manx economy.

Earlier this month the Examiner reported that figures released by the government in its Isle of Man in Numbers publication showed that the birth rate had declined consistently since 2013 and is now at a 10-year low.

But research carried out by Paul Craine MLC, author of the Manx Population Atlas, has revealed you have to go back much further than 10 years to find fewer births in the Isle of Man than there were in 2022. Mr Craine said: ‘Research into a number of sources in the Manx Museum, including the remarkable “Registrar General’s Annual Reports and Statistical Reviews”, shows that the number of births last year was the lowest since 1918. The year 2022 saw an astonishing 105-year low!’

The 586 births in the Isle of Man last year were fewer than in any year in the 1950s, when the island experienced deep economic and population decline, and below the levels throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s.

While births remained above 740 per year through the Second World War, they fell markedly during the First World War, dropping from 899 in 1913 to just 535 in 1918. After both wars, births bounced back (post-war baby booms) with peak years in 1920 (900 births) and 1947 (969 births).

Mr Craine’s graph shows that 1918 and 2022 were the only two years in this period with fewer than 600 births.

He said: ‘It is also clear on the graph that the more recent fall in births from a peak of 1,023 in the year 2000 to the 586 in 2022 is a remarkable drop, amounting to a 42.7% fall in births in just 12 years. Whilst many countries are now experiencing falling births, none appear to be experiencing declines more extreme than those found in the Isle of Man.’

Government is pining its hopes on expanding the population to 100,000 to bring in much-needed tax revenues. Encouraging people to relocate here is a major plank of that policy – but natural population growth is key too.

The June sitting of Tynwald will consider the 15 recommendations in the report of the select committee on population rebalancing.

It points out that the birth rate is falling worldwide and cites as possible factors the higher number of women in education and work, greater access to contraception, and growing inter-generational inequalities with those born since the 1980s finding it harder to afford to buy a home and raise a family.

This doesn’t explain why births have been falling faster in the Isle of Man over the past decade than anywhere else.

In the last decade only one year, 2021, saw the number of births increase, and that was only by 15, and then in 2022 it fell sharply again, from 675 to 586.

The committee calls for government to develop a clear population policy, led from the centre, no later than December this year.

It recommends ‘much-needed’ shared parental leave and an ‘urgent and substantial’ uprating of the maximum rate of maternity allowance payable to women who have been employed earners. This has not increased since 2011.

Child benefit should be paid at the same rate for second and subsequent children, reversing a policy introduced when Eddie Teare was Treasury Minister, the committee suggests – and preschool credits should extend to children from the age of one.

The report also highlights the night-time economy, streetscape and entertainment spaces as having a role to play in attracting and retaining younger people, and says government should facilitate and encourage the development of schemes to ‘address gaps in the island’s lifestyle offering’.

It says Locate Isle of Man should market the island as a ‘forever home’ to key target demographics to help redress the population imbalance.