There were 5,083 births in the first quarter of 2008 in the A. C. of the Basque Country, which was up by 3.8% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to Eustat data. By provinces, 767 children were born in Alava, 2633 in Bizkaia and 1683 in Gipuzkoa.

As refers to birth sequence, over half of the children (2689) were first children in the second quarter of 2008; 1912 children (37.6%) were born into families where there already was another child and the percentage of third or later children stood at 9.5%.

As refers to the distribution of births according the age of the mother, there continued to be a clear preponderance of the 30-34 year-old age group, in which almost half of the births took place. This group is followed by the next oldest group, aged between 35-39, which accounted for 26.1% and was ahead of the 25-29 age group, with 17% of births. At either end of the scale, the group of mothers under 25 accounted for 6% of births, whereas mothers over 40 lagged slightly behind, with 4.5% of the total of births.

More single mothers

Children born out of wedlock amounted to 30.3% of the total, which was up by almost five points with respect to the second quarter of 2007. Álava, with 27.1%, was the only province with figures under those for the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country as a whole. Single mothers give birth when younger than the rest of women with children as a whole, as 17.6 % of unmarried mothers were under 25.

Table 1. Children born alive in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. Comparative Table

Graph 1. Monthly birth movement