The number of newborns in the nation last year reached a nine-year low, while the average age of women giving birth to their first child reached a record high, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
As the average age at which people are getting married for the first time has been increasing, so has the average age of women giving birth to their first child, which last year reached 31 — 4.26 years more than 20 years ago and 1.71 years more than 10 years ago, the data showed.
The majority, or 35.57 percent, of women who gave birth to their first child last year were aged 30 to 34, followed by women aged 25 to 29 at 27.93 percent, and 35 to 39 at 19.19 percent, the data showed.
Women aged 35 and older only accounted for 9.4 percent of those giving birth to their first child in 2009, but the figure increased by 13.6 percentage points to 23 percent last year, the ministry said.
The number of newborns last year dropped to 175,074, 5,582 fewer than in 2018, and the second-lowest number since the ministry started keeping records in 1974, the data showed.
The number of newborns last year was only slightly higher than the 166,000 recorded in 2010, the year of the tiger, which is considered an inauspicious year to give birth in, the data showed.
The annual number of newborns has always been greater than the number of deaths, but from January to last month, the number of newborns dropped to less than the number of deaths, a ministry official said.
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