Without migration Europe’s fertility rates stays below replenishment level

Without migration Europe’s fertility rates stays below replenishment level

Eurostat Release date: 28 March 2018

Geographical information
The European Union (EU) includes: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Women in the European Union have first child on average at 29
Over 5 million births in EU in 2016

• In 2016, 5.148 million babies were born in the European Union (EU), compared with 5.103 million in 2015.
• On average in the EU, women who gave birth to their first child in 2016 were 29 years old. Across Member States, first time mothers were on average the youngest in Bulgaria and the oldest in Italy.
• Around 5% of births of first children in the EU in 2016 were to women aged less than 20 (teenage mothers) and around 3% to women aged 40 and over.
• Among the 5.148 million births in the EU in 2016, nearly 1 in 5 (or almost 930 000) concerned a third or subsequent child.
• Overall, the total fertility rate in the EU stood at 1.60 births per woman in 2016. It varied between Member States from 1.34 in both Spain and Italy to 1.92 in France.

As an EU average, the rate is even lower, stalling at 1.6, with only Turkey, which is outside of the EU, exceeding France at 2.08 as the sole country in continental Europe bucking the trend.

This information comes from recently published data by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

The fertility indicators presented in this news release show only a small part of the large amount of data related to demography available at Eurostat.

Total fertility rate highest in France and Sweden
In 2016, France (1.92 births per woman) and Sweden (1.85) were the two Member States with the highest total fertility rates in EU.

They were followed by Ireland (1.81), Denmark and the United Kingdom (both 1.79).

Conversely, the lowest fertility rates were observed in Spain and Italy (both 1.34 births per woman), Portugal (1.36), Cyprus and Malta (both 1.37), Greece (1.38) and Poland (1.39).