A total of 48,661 babies were born in the nation in the first quarter of this year, a drop of 10.8 percent from the same period of last year, while the new estimate for newborns for this entire year is 190,000, Ministry of the Interior information showed yesterday.
Of cities and counties in the first quarter, Hsinchu City had the highest so-called “crude birth rate” — which indicates the average annual number of live births during a year per 1,000 people in the population estimated at midyear — with 0.3 percent, while Keelung City saw the lowest, at 0.13 percent, the statistics show.
Compared with the same quarter of last year, all cities and counties nationwide saw a decline in the crude birth rate, with Lienchiang County on outlying Matsu Island registering the largest decline — 0.05 percentage points — followed by Chiayi County, which posted a 0.04 percentage point fall.
The ministry said that eight out of every 100 newborns in the first quarter had a parent who is a citizen of China, Hong Kong or Macau, or a foreign national.
Over the past decade, the rate of babies born to a mother who is a citizen of China, Hong Kong or Macau has dropped to 3.9 percent from 5.2 percent of the total, while the rate of babies born to a mother who is a foreign national has fallen to 2.8 percent from 8.1 percent in 2004, according to ministry data.
The gender ratio among newborns during the period was 107.5 boys to every 100 girls, the ministry said.
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