May 5, 2024 at 8:00 AM
Background
HARDERWIJK (ANP) – More than 164,000 children were born in the Netherlands last year, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reported on Friday. That is slightly less than the year before; in 2022, slightly more 167,500 children were born.
Since 2010, fewer children have been born per woman on average. This is because more women remain childless, CBS concluded in December. The number of children per mother remains the same. In 2023, the average number of children per woman was 1.43; the lowest figure to date.
Last year, more than 75,000 women became mothers for the first time; in 2022 there were 78,000. Mothers who had a child for the first time were on average 30.3 years old. 37 percent of those born were a second child, 12 percent a third child and 5 percent a fourth or subsequent child.
Most women had children between the ages of 30 and 35 in 2023; 117 children per thousand women in that age group. “Ten years ago, young motherhood was more common. Motherhood at a later age is now becoming slightly more common,” CBS said. An average of ten children were born for every thousand women under 25. Eight children were born for every thousand women aged 45 or older.
In 2022, the average age for the first child among mothers in the European Union was 29.7 years, according to figures from Eurostat and CBS. In six other EU member states the age is higher than in the Netherlands (30.3 years), with Italy (31.7 years) and Spain (31.6 years) at the top. In Bulgaria, mothers are relatively the youngest at the birth of their first child (26.6 years).
Dutch fathers are on average 2.5 years older than mothers at the birth of the first child. In 2022, the average age for fathers was 32.8 years, according to Statistics Netherlands. The average age of fathers last year is not yet known.
In 2021, 179,000 children were born, the highest number in ten years. The statistics office suspects that this baby boom was related to the corona measures.
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