Cyprus is among the EU member states with the lowest number of teenage mothers in 2013, according to a new Eurostat report for International Day of Families, which was marked on Friday.
In 2013, a majority (51.2 per cent) of women in the EU gave birth to their first child in their 20s, while 40.6 per cent became mothers in their 30s. In Cyprus, 57 per cent of births in 2013 were to women between the ages of 20 and 29 and 38 per cent to women aged 30-39. Teenage births clocked in at 2.4 per cent, less than half the EU average of 5.4 per cent. Births to women over 40 at 1.9 per cent in Cyprus was also under the EU average of 2.8 per cent.
According to Eurostat, more than 127,000 births of first children in the EU in 2013 were to teenage mothers and around 65,500 to women aged 40 and over. On average, women in the EU were 28.7 years old when they became mothers for the first time. In Cyprus this figure was 29 on average.
“The highest shares of births of first children to teenage mothers were recorded in Romania (15.6 per cent of total births of first children in 2013), Bulgaria (14.7 per cent) and Hungary (11.0 per cent), ahead of Slovakia (9.9 per cent), Latvia (9.1 per cent) and the United Kingdom (8.2 per cent),” the report said. “On the other hand, the lowest shares were observed in Italy (1.8 per cent), Slovenia (1.9 per cent), the Netherlands (2.2 per cent), Luxembourg and Cyprus (both 2.4 per cent).”
Among the 5.1 million births in the EU in 2013, nearly 1 in 5 (or more than 880,000) concerned a third or subsequent child.
In 2013, the mean age of mothers at the birth of their first child varied significantly between the EU member states, with a gap of almost five years between the youngest and the oldest. The youngest average ages of mothers at the birth of their first child were recorded in Bulgaria (25.7 years), Romania (25.8), Latvia (26.1), Estonia (26.5), Poland and Lithuania (both 26.7) and Slovakia (26.9). Conversely, women were oldest on average when giving birth to their first child in Italy (30.6 years), followed by Spain (30.4), Luxembourg (30.0) and Greece (29.9).
At the opposite end of the age range, the highest proportions of births of first children in 2013 to women aged 40 and over were registered in Italy (6.1 per cent of total births of first children in 2013), Spain (5.1 per cent), Greece (4.1 per cent), Luxembourg (3.8 per cent) and Ireland (3.4 per cent). In contrast, shares of less than 1 per cent were recorded in Poland and Slovakia (both 0.7 per cent) and Lithuania (0.9 per cent). In 2013, more than half of the women giving birth for the first time were aged in their 20s in a large majority of the EU member states. Notable exceptions were to be found in the following member states where the majority of first births were to mothers aged in their 30s: Spain (59.4 per cent of births of first children concerned women aged 30-39), Italy (54.1 per cent), Ireland (52.7 per cent) and Greece (51.9 per cent).
At EU level in 2013, more than 80 per cent (82.6 per cent) of births were first and second children, while births of third children accounted for 11.8 per cent and of fourth or subsequent children for 5.6 per cent. Across the EU member states, the highest share of births ranked fourth or subsequent among total births was recorded in Finland (10.4 per cent), followed by the United Kingdom (9.5 per cent), Romania (9.4 per cent) and Ireland (9.0 per cent).
In Cyprus 48.4 per cent of births in 2013 were first children, 35.7 per cent were second children, 11.9 per cent were third children and 4 per cent were a fourth child.
