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Press Release 18/09/2015

BIRTH STATISTICS. I/2015

Births in the Basque Country fell by 3.4% in the first quarter of 2015

43.3% of mothers were aged 35 or over and 41.2% of births were outside marriage

In the first quarter of 2015 the number of births in the Basque Country stood at 4,590, which was a drop of 3.4% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eustat data. The number of births decreased in two of the three provinces: in Álava, the decrease was 5.2% and in Bizkaia it was 5.1%; on the other hand, Gipuzkoa saw a slight increase of 0.2%. Specifically, in Álava 761 girls and boys were born, 2,247 were born in Bizkaia and 1,582 in Gipuzkoa.

In the distribution of births according to the age of the mother, there continued to be a clear preponderance of the 30-34 year-old age group, in which 38.1% of births took place. This group was followed by the group immediately above it (mothers aged 35-39), which accounted for 34.7% and was ahead of the 25-29 age group, although the latter only accounted for 13.1%.

With regards to the same quarter of 2014, the number of women who became mothers aged 40 or over rose, going from 379 in 2014 to 393 in 2015. The births from these women made up 8.6% of the total, exceeding the 5.5% of births by mothers younger than 25.

Births outside marriage accounted for 41.2% of the total, a figure 2.3 percentage points above that for the first quarter of 2014. Bizkaia, with 42.5%, was the only province to post higher figures than the Basque Country as a whole, whereas Álava posted 40.7% and Gipuzkoa 39.5%. The maternity age of this group was below that of the overall group of women that had children, given that 10.3% of them were under the age of 25.

According to the order of birth, in the first quarter of 2015 more than half of the births, 2,369 children, were first born; 1,779 (38.8%) arrived in families that already had another son or daughter, and the percentage of third or subsequent children stood at 9.6%.

19.6% of mothers were foreign nationals

In 19.6% of births in the Basque Country during the first three months of 2015, the mother was a foreign national. This figure was higher in Álava and Gipuzkoa, where it reached 22.3% and 21.4% respectively, compared to 17.4% in Bizkaia. There was also a growth in the number of foreign mothers of almost one percentage point with respect to the previous year.