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Press Release 26/09/2016

BIRTH STATISTICS. I/2016

Births were down 2.1% in the first quarter of 2016 in the Basque Country

44.9% of mothers were aged 35 or over and 42.2% of births were outside marriage

In the first quarter of 2016 the number of births in the Basque Country stood at 4,526, which was a drop of 2.1% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eustat data. By province, the number of births only decreased in Gipuzkoa (-11%); on the other hand, Álava saw an increase of 1.7% and Bizkaia 2.7%. This situation contrasts with the year before, when there was a decline in Álava (-5.2%) and Bizkaia (-5.1%), while in Gipuzkoa it remained steady (+0.2%), which may explain it to some extent. Specifically, in Álava 780 girls and boys were born, 2,324 were born in Bizkaia and 1,422 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 36.7% of births took place. This group was followed by the group immediately above it (mothers aged 35-39), which accounted for 35.4% and was ahead of the 25-29 age group, although the latter only accounted for 13%.

With regards to the same quarter of 2015, the number of women who became mothers aged 40 or over rose, going from 396 in 2015 to 428 in 2016. The births from these women made up 9.5% of the total, exceeding the 5.4% of births by mothers younger than 25.

Births outside marriage accounted for 42.2% of the total, a figure 1.1 percentage points above that for the first quarter of 2015. Bizkaia, with 45.1%, was the only province to post higher figures than the Basque Country as a whole, whereas Álava posted 40% and Gipuzkoa 38.9%. The maternity age of this group was below that of the overall group of women that had children, given that 9.5% of them were under the age of 25.

According to the order of birth, in the first quarter of 2016 more than half of the births, 2,299 children, were first-born; 1,747 (38.6%) arrived in families that already had another son or daughter, and the percentage of third or subsequent children stood at 10.6%.

21.2% of mothers were foreign nationals

In 21.2% of births in the Basque Country during the first three months of 2016, the mother was a foreign national. This figure was higher in Álava where it stood at 27.9%, against 19.6% in Bizkaia and 20% in Gipuzkoa. There was also a growth in the number of foreign mothers of almost 1.6 percentage points with respect to the previous year.

Table 1. Live births in the Basque Country. Comparative table
Source: Eustat. Birth statistics