Is the UK going through a new baby boom?

I live in Eastbourne, the once bone yard of the UK, where people went to retire (and die).

Not any more!

As I walk round Eastbourne I’m witnessing a baby boom. Thousands of little kids and babies swinging on mum's arm, swarming the place. I mean everywhere!

So I started to think why is this?

First: why did the baby boom, from the post war period up until the mid(ish) sixties, happen?

The experts tell that it was the new, post war, affluence. It gave people confidence to plan long term, so families boomed too.

Second: But aren’t we told that affluence is the biggest contraceptive of all?

Doesn’t look like it. Because Eastbourne has become a reasonably affluent town.

But third: The UK has (is) experiencing a long boom economy.

Well I'm dazed, because the baby boom is happen throughout the UK.

Women are choosing to have more babies than at any time since 1980, according to official figures which hint at the first baby boom of the 21st century.

And the fertility rate - the number of births per woman - rose from 1.8 babies per woman in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006, the fifth annual rise in a row and the most babies born in a single year since 1993, the Office for National Statistics say.

Or is it due to the fact that Cool Britania is more cosmopolitan, and thus more randy?