Data for the first quarter of 2002 on Birth Statistics prepared by the EUSTAT show the figure of births in the A.C. of the Basque Country to be 4,254, which represents 2.9% fewer than the previous quarter. By provinces, 564 babies were born in Álava, 2,222 in Bizkaia and 1,468 in Gipuzkoa.
According to the order of birth, over half, 2,414 were first born in the first quarter of 2002; 1,607 babies (37.8%) came to families that already had another child and not quite 5.5% were third or subsequent born. Bizkaia (42,6%) was the only Province where the number of second or subsequent born was below the average for the A.C. of the Basque Country, coming to 43.3%.
Age of mothers stabilises
In the distribution of births according to the mother’s age, there is still a clear preponderance in the group of mothers aged 30-34 years, which account for almost half the births. This group is followed by the immediately higher 35-39 years group with 25.3%, ahead of the 25-29 years group who account for 20.5%. Between the extreme age groups, the under 25 year-olds represent 5.7%, while the over 40 year-olds only account for 3.3% of births. Nevertheless, the distribution is very close to that of the first quarter of 2001.
Births outside marriage represented 17.9% of the total, having increased almost three percent with regard to the first quarter of 2001. Alava was the only province with higher values than the whole of the A.C. of the Basque Country (20.2%). The maternity age for this group is the youngest among all the women who gave birth, as 20% of unmarried mothers were aged between 15 and 24.