Simon Hunter
THE DECLINING trend for Spain’s birth rate has been confirmed once more by the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE). According to an estimate released on Wednesday, there were 329,812 babies born in the country in 2022, 7,011 fewer than the year before.
The falling numbers have been registered since 2016, when there were 408,734 births. Since then, there has been a decrease every year: 391,265 in 2017; 370,827 in 2018; 358,747 in 2019; 340,635 in 2020; and 336,823 in 2021.
The INE data also shows a marked decline in December: in that month in 2022 a total of 27,600 babies were born in Spain. That’s 929 fewer than the same month a year before.
Experts point to women opting to have fewer children and waiting until much later to do so as among the reasons behind this phenomenon. The coronavirus pandemic also caused the number of births to fall.
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