Deaths outnumber births in half of neighbourhoods, according to analysis that lays bare the 'alarming' drop in fertility rates.

Some of the worst-hit areas across England and Wales are shrinking naturally at a pace of 5 per cent a year, in trends which have spooked experts. Parts of Wales, Merseyside, Devon, Dorset and Sussex are threatened by 'underpopulation', data suggests.

Demographers claim the freefalling figures mean we may need to become reliant on immigration, which has hit record highs in Covid's wake, to prop up our economy. 

Fertility rates have plunged to their lowest levels since records began in the 1930s.

If the downward spiral continues it may leave Britain with too few younger people to work, pay tax and look after the elderly. This would pile extra pressure on the NHS and social care systems which are creaking at the seams, and hamper economic growth, experts warn.

Yet becoming reliant on immigration to offset low birth rates would only fuel the fire on what is already an insanely controversial topic in British society, claims one of the country's most esteemed voices on the topic.

David Coleman, emeritus professor of demography at the University of Oxford, believes Britain's high immigration numbers are 'completely out of control'.

Professor Coleman, a former Home Office adviser and co-founder of pressure group of Migration Watch: 'Driving round the country, the obvious population change is evident in the new estates growing up around so many towns as people leave cities whose populations are replenished from abroad.

'The grotesque levels of immigration must be reduced radically,' he said.

'High immigration will keep the population growing fast even with a low birth rate but the result would be a country whose population was increasingly eventually predominantly, of immigrant origin.'

MailOnline's investigation, using Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, found the highest rate of decline was in sleepy village of Pentredwr, near Swansea.

The 2021 Census estimated that 1,561 people lived in that particular neighbourhood, which stretches over a dozen or so streets.

Yet the ONS said 95 residents in that same community died and only five babies were born in 2023.

Although it excludes migration, that is the equivalent of around 5.8 per cent of its population dying and not being replaced in just a year. 

Should that speed of population decline continue and net migration remain stable, that particular Swansea suburb would halve in size in just 12 years.

Our analysis plotted births and deaths for all 36,000-plus lower super output areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales – tiny geographical areas made up of between 1,000 and 3,000 people.

Full results of our probe can be viewed above in an interactive map. To find your specific area, select your council from the drop-down list and zoom into wherever you want to search.

Each neighbourhood is ranked by the rate at which the population is dying out and not being replaced by births – allowing you to see where the hotspots are. 

For a population to stay the same size without relying on immigration, nations must achieve a 'replacement' level fertility rate of 2.1.

Yet women in England and Wales, on average, now only have 1.44 children. 

MailOnline's investigation, using Office for National Statistics data, found the highest rate of decline was in the sleepy village of Pentre-dwr, near Swansea (left), and in second was an area of Southport, Sefton (right)

Many of the top areas were on the coast, including part of Rhyl in Denbighshire, Wales (left) in third and the St Peter's area of Sunderland (right) in fourth

In an academic paper which sparked warnings, scientists forecasted it could fall to 1.3 by 2100. The US was on a similar downward trajectory, it was claimed in the respected medical journal The Lancet.

Sharing their shock findings, the University of Washington team warned 97 per cent of nations face the threat of underpopulation by 2100. By then, half of all babies may be born in sub-Saharan Africa.

Women prioritising their education and careers, and couples waiting to have children until later in life have fuelled the trend. 

Rising costs, particularly the price of childcare and housing, is another factor thought to be majorly putting people off starting families.

There is no evidence that Covid vaccines are to blame, with scientists insisting there is no proof they harm fertility..

A MailOnline audit earlier this year found none of the 300-plus authorities in England and Wales had a fertility rate exceeding the replacement threshold.

In 2023, 591,000 babies were born across the two countries. 

In 2001, just 16.5 per cent were born to non-UK born mothers but this has since risen to a third. The share has even exceeded 75 per cent in some districts of London.

Foreign-born mothers typically have more children, figures show. 

But experts say the fertility rates of immigrants' descendants tend to converge with those of the native population over time as second and third generation immigrants are influenced by social norms of their birth country.

It means that to sustain population growth through immigration, a continuous influx of new migrants is required – making long-term demographic planning both politically sensitive and costly. 

Britain's population, which stood at 67.6m in 2022, is set to hit 72.5m and overtake that of France by 2032, predict officials. By then, deaths are expected to have completely offset births. It means the growth would be solely down to immigration. 

Immigration spiralled to all-time highs in the year ending June 2023, with net migration of 906,000 – enough to fill two cities the size of Bristol. Tens of thousands arrived on small boats.

This tumbled to 431,000 in the year to December 2024, figures revealed last week. Tories seized on the ONS data as proof that their curbs were already having an impact before Labour took power. 

Separate Home Office figures showed 32,245 asylum seekers were housed in hotels by the end of March, despite Keir Starmer's vow to shut them down.

The Prime Minister unveiled a crackdown on legal immigration last month, warning that failure to control the system risked turning Britain into an 'island of strangers'. Downing Street was forced to deny angry comparisons from MPs that it was an echo of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech.

Scrambling to blunt the threat of Reform, Sir Keir vowed to give Brits what they had 'asked for time and time again' as he announced a package to 'take back control of our borders'. 

Under Number 10's long-awaited blueprint to curb immigration, skills thresholds will be hiked and rules on fluency in English toughened. Migrants will also be required to wait 10 years for citizenship rather than the current five and face deportation for even lower-level crimes.

Policymakers estimate the government's package will bring down annual inflows by around 100,000.

The figures in our analysis will be skewed by certain neighbourhoods being havens for the elderly. 

For instance, the Swansea neighbourhood Bôn-y-maen, which tops the list and is officially titled 'Swansea 014C', has a nursing home. 

Behind that district of Swansea came Duke's in Sefton (-5.3%), Rhyl East in Denbighshire (-5.3%) and St Peter's in Sunderland (-5.2%).

Dr Paula Sheppard, an Oxford University evolutionary anthropologist who specialises in barriers to having children in Western nations, said none of the areas will necessarily 'die out'.

She believes that internal migration, from Brits moving around the country, will naturally repopulate areas as the elderly people pass on their homes to their children when they die.

Dr Sheppard said: 'On the other hand, the neighbourhood in Swansea might be relatively poor with people living in less nice housing and working more manual labour jobs. 

'These are the sorts of towns immigrants from other countries might move to because rents are more affordable and unskilled jobs more available. 

'These towns might do fine if this is the dynamic – but if you want to increase fertility rates here, you have more chance than in the retirement villages of Devon and Dorset.' 

Digging deeper into the numbers, our audit also found there were thousands of areas growing rapidly. However, those areas often had high numbers of residents born in foreign countries. 

The areas with the highest rate of growth were the LSOA of Milton Keynes called 024E (8.8 per cent), which is a part of the city where thousands of new homes are under construction. It was followed by Brent's 035D (5.9 per cent), a zone surrounding Wembley Stadium. 

According to the 2021 Census, the areas had a foreign-born population of approximately 27 per cent and 58 per cent, respectively. 

Professor Coleman said: 'Usually the most important process determining population in small districts is migration, in and out, often mostly from/to inside the country.

'Our problem is the extraordinary level of immigration and the population growth which it creates, despite the low birth rate.

'The most obvious sign of demographic change are the housing estates going up all over the country around every town, I think mostly not for locals but from people leaving many cities, which are replenished from abroad.' 

As well as becoming a political headache for Sir Keir, 'baby busts' is also a pet topic of Elon Musk.

In 2017, the eccentric Tesla billionaire and 'First Buddy' of Donald Trump said Earth's population was 'accelerating towards collapse but few seem to notice or care'.

Musk previously joked he was 'doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis', in a reference to him having reportedly had 14 children with four different women.

He has said in the past: 'People are going to have to revive the idea of having children as a kind of social duty, otherwise civilisation will just die.'

In May 2022 Musk claimed Japan, experiencing its own baby bust, could 'flat-out disappear' if its low birth rates continue to decline and that Italy 'will have no people' if the current trends persist.