Eurostat’s figures, released recently, show Portugal registered the biggest drop in births over the thirteen-year span from 2001 to 2014, having fallen from over 112,000 babies born during the first year of that time-frame, to around 82,000 over a decade later.
In 2014, 82,367 babies were born in Portugal, the lowest number in the European Union, down almost 30,000 births from the 112,774 babies born in 2001.
Eurostat’s ‘birth and fertility in the EU’ report shows that during the course of 2014, 5.132 million babies were born within the EU’s 28 member states, up from the 5 million registered in 2001.
France continued to record the highest number of births, at 819,300, followed by the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland.
Eurostat also found the average birth-rate per woman rose from 1.46 in 2001 to 1.58 in 2014.
In 2014, Portugal was at the bottom of the average birth-rate list, with 1.23 live births per woman, while France topped it, having registered 2.01 live births.
According to Eurostat a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman is considered to be the replacement level in developed countries, “in other words, the average number of live births per woman required to keep the population
size constant in the absence of inward or outward migration.”
First time mothers were found to be youngest in Bulgaria and Romania, and oldest in Italy and Spain, while Portugal’s average age for first-time mothers was 29.2.