Portugal has EU’s lowest fertility rate

Portugal has the lowest fertility rate in the European Union as well as registering the biggest drop in births between 2001 and 2014, according to new figures from the European statistics office Eurostat.

Eurostat’s figures, released recently, show Portugal registered the biggest drop in births over the thirteen-year span from 2001 to 2014, having fallen from over 112,000 babies born during the first year of that time-frame, to around 82,000 over a decade later.

In 2014, 82,367 babies were born in Portugal, the lowest number in the European Union, down almost 30,000 births from the 112,774 babies born in 2001.

Eurostat’s ‘birth and fertility in the EU’ report shows that during the course of 2014, 5.132 million babies were born within the EU’s 28 member states, up from the 5 million registered in 2001.

