 so when we have that kind of population decline the two big problems the first is a society first of all gets very old and that has all sorts of problems for government finance for labor shortages who's going to look after the elderly japan has this problem in spades and has a massive government debt to gdp ratio the whole financial system could come crashing down and then eventually populations actually start declining in the uk as a whole now we probably have more deaths every year than births without immigration our population be declining