Based on the neonatal heel-prick tests which are done on newborn babies, the number of births during the first half of 2016 was up by 2,639 on the same period last year.
This comes after four years of negative growth, with the blame being laid mostly on the financial crisis which made prospective parents think twice before bringing a child into this world.
This comes after European statistical agency Eurostat revealed that 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.
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.
Recent figures showed that the EU’s average natural growth rate, or the difference between births and deaths, in 2015 was negative for the first time (-0.3 per 1,000 inhabitants).
Across the EU last year, 5.1 million newborns were registered and 5.2 million deaths.
Despite the negative natural growth rate, the EU’s overall population increased by almost 2 million people due to migration.