Birth rate showing signs of recovery

Portugal has, for years, held the position of the EU nation with the lowest number of births per woman, and while this remains the case, the country has revealed signs of a population recovery.

Based on the neonatal heel-prick tests which are done on newborn babies, the number of births during the first half of 2016 was up by 2,639 on the same period last year.

This comes after four years of negative growth, with the blame being laid mostly on the financial crisis which made prospective parents think twice before bringing a child into this world.

This comes after European statistical agency Eurostat revealed that 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.

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.

