Catalan women have not had so few children since the post-war period.
In 2024, 53,793 children were born in Catalonia and there were 1.08 children per woman.
BarcelonaAt an all-time low. The birth rate in Catalonia continues to decline, despite an increase in the resident population. Two factors are working against this backdrop: the later age at which motherhood begins and the fact that women are having fewer children. According to data released this Friday by the Statistics Institute of Catalonia (Idescat), the fertility rate has bottomed out at 1.08 children per woman, accentuating a trend that has been ongoing for years, reaching the lowest rate in the last 50 years. In fact, this indicator has already fallen below its last historical low (1995), and one has to go back to 1952, the post-war period, to find a lower number of births (53,236).
According to the data, 53,793 children were born in 2024, a figure that represents a decrease of 0.8% compared to the previous year. This is also the lowest figure since 1995. Despite the outlook for fewer births, not all of Catalonia has performed the same way. In 17 of the regions, there has been an upturn in the last year, with a 23% increase in the Urgell region being particularly notable. At the other extreme is Ripollès, which leads the decline in births, with 20%. Metropolitan Barcelona, where the population is most populated, saw the slightest decline (-0.8%), while Penedès saw the steepest decline (3.9%).
For the first time, Idescat reports that 456 babies born in 2024 have, in addition to the surrogate mother, another woman as the parent, a situation that represents 0.9% of all births.
As for the age at which women begin to have children, women continue to delay the age of their first pregnancy, which now stands at 32.6 years, nearly four years older than their grandmothers. In 1975, the first birth took place around the age of 28, and the number of children per mother exceeded two, specifically 2.20, while now it is less than one (0.8).
Nationality of mothers
Just over a third of babies have foreign mothers (35%). In absolute figures, this number totals 19,070, representing a small annual increase of 1.2%, while the number of Spanish mothers has fallen by 1.9%. Although the fertility rate of foreign mothers is higher than that of native residents, the truth is that it has decreased for all of them in the last year analyzed. This confirms what demographic experts claim: that newly arrived women and their daughters born and raised in Catalonia are adapting to the generalized birth pattern.
Foreign mothers who have had children by 2024 are, on average, 2.4 years younger than Spanish mothers. The average age at childbearing is 30.8 years for foreign mothers and 33.2 years for Spanish mothers.
