The provisional data provided by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on the number of babies born last year confirms what demographers have been predicting for some time: that the Spanish birth rate is not only at a minimum but will continue to fall in the coming years. years.
During 2023, it is estimated that there were a total of 322,075 births in Spain, the lowest figure in the INE’s historical series, which begins in 1941. The decline is 2% compared to the previous year and more than 24% compared to the previous year. 2013. That is, three quarters of the babies born a decade ago are born.
And the drop is more pronounced in some territories. In Melilla and Ceuta, respectively, 19% and 12% fewer babies were born than in 2022. The drop was also greater than 10% in Castilla-La Mancha, 9% in La Rioja, 5% in Castilla y León and Navarra, more than 4% in Aragon and 3.3% in Catalonia. Only in Madrid and Extremadura more children were born last year than a year before.
The decrease in the number of births has been accompanied by a delay in the age of motherhood in recent years. Proof of this is that the number of births to mothers over 40 years of age has grown by 19.3% since 2013, and last year they already represented 11% of all births. And the number of mothers over 50, which grew another 12% last year, has more than tripled in a decade: from 82 counted in 2013 it rose to 288 last year.
On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer births to women under 25, which account for 9.4% of the total and have decreased by 26% since 2013.
INE estimates indicate that last year the number of deaths also decreased. During 2023, 435,331 people died in Spain, 5.8% less than in 2022.
Mortality only increased among those under 4 years of age (1.7%), while it fell by almost 11% among people aged 85-89 and more than 6% among those over 90.
Mortality was down in all the autonomies, although the greatest decreases compared to 2022 occurred in Ceuta (-10.9%), Aragón (10.6%) and the Basque Country (8.4%).
With these birth and mortality figures, the natural balance of the Spanish population in 2023 was again negative at 113,256 people. By autonomous community, the greatest differences between births and deaths were recorded in Galicia (-18,701), Castilla y León (-16,270), Andalusia (-13,544) and Catalunya (-13,384). On the other hand, Madrid registered a natural population increase of 4,770 people, Murcia of 729 and the Balearic Islands of 67.
