Britain's population to overtake Germany within half a century due to immigrant babies
THE UK population will overtake Germany's in the next 45 years because of the huge number of immigrants expected to have children.
Experts predict increasing numbers of immigrant babies will see Britain's population rocket
The migrant baby boom will result in the number of people living in Britain rising from 67 million to an astonishing 77 million by 2060.
Germany's population - current the highest in Europe - will fall from 81 million to 67 million over the same period because the country has the lowest birth rate in the world and immigrants there have not added significantly to the number.
The shocking figures were released by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics on behalf of the World Bank.
Andre Wolf, who compiled the results, said: “Immigrants tend to adapt quite fast to the fertility behaviour of the native population in Germany.
“They seem to adapt faster than immigrants in France or the UK.”
Immigrants tend to adapt quite fast to the fertility behaviour of the native population in Germany
The figures show a woman born abroad but living in Britain will have 2.19 children compared to those born in Britain, who will have 1.79.
The Office of National Statistics has previously shown Britain's population has soared by 4.6million between 2001 and 2012, with 57 per cent of that increase coming from net migration.
Migrant Watch chairman Lord Green said he believed those figures underestimated the true scale of the rise because they do not take into account the future children of migrants who arrived before 2012.
He told said: “This is a highly technical subject but the methodology used by the ONS leaves the public under the impression that only 60 per cent of our population growth is as a result of immigration.
“If one takes account of the children of immigrants already arrived. We find that about 82 per cent of our recent population increase is due to immigration.”