The proportion of women who never have children has doubled in a generation, ONS figures show.

The official figures show that of women born in 1946, just 9 per cent were still childless at 45 - the age the ONS defines as the end of childbearing years.

Statisticians said women were less likely to be married and more likely to be putting off having children until they could no longer have them.

Of those born in 1971, 18 per cent were childless in 2016, when they turned 45. Almost half of women who turned 30 in 2016 did not have any children, up from a low of just 18 per cent in 1976.

The data shows that while the two-child family remains the most common situation, the younger women were significantly likely to have no children or one child than their older counterparts.

Women were increasingly likely to postpone "decisions about whether to have children until it may be biologically too late", the report said.

The change "may be due to a decline in the proportion of women married, changes in the perceived costs and benefits of child-rearing versus work and leisure activities, [and] greater social acceptability of a childfree lifestyle," the ONS said.