Until what age is a person young? Well, a few decades ago we would have answered that until the early twenties, but now many studies talk about the youth population including those in their thirties. The 50s are the previous 40s and the 60s are the new 50s...and so on. It is a social evolution that, however, cannot be applied to the reproductive age of women. And this gap between biological and reproductive age is behind the fact that a good part of women are unaware that from the age of 35 the probability of becoming pregnant falls to 20%, and from the age of 40, to 5%.
A situation that explains, in part, the brutal drop in the birth rate in Spain (the second lowest in all of Europe, after Malta) and the fact that more than 11% of the babies born each year come true thanks to birth control techniques. assisted reproduction (almost 40% of women have their first child after the age of 38).
These are some of the data that the Spanish Fertility Society (SEF) presented yesterday at the Spanish Consensus on Birth and Reproductive Health conference, carried out in collaboration with the Spanish Society of Gynecology (SEGO) and the Spanish Society of Family Medicine and Community, (SEMFYC), among other societies, in the Senate, where they proposed a roadmap to improve the fertility and fecundity of Spaniards.
During the day, the need to put birth rates and the family as a whole at the forefront of Spanish public policies was highlighted, as a national issue, because the situation, experts indicated, is dramatic.
And if not, look at the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on the number of babies born last year and which confirm what demographers have been predicting for some time: that the Spanish birth rate is not only at a minimum, but is going to continue falling in the coming 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.
And they don't have more children not because women don't want to, but because they can't. “From 18 to 30 years old, they don't have them because they believe they are too young for it; from 30 to 35, because they encounter serious problems in becoming emancipated (the price of housing is one of the key factors) and settling into work, and from 35 to 40, because they do not have a stable partner. From that age onwards, due to the difficulties they have in getting pregnant, simply due to a question of age,” said sociologist Luis Ayuso, one of the speakers of the day.
This delay in motherhood (the average age of the first child is now over 32 for women) has its consequences: women who give birth to their first child before the age of 28 are very likely to have a second. If they light it after 35, no,” Ayuso said.
Given this panorama, experts ask health and social authorities and public decision-makers to stop ignoring the “serious fertility problem that our society faces. This threatens the sustainability of our system and has very pernicious effects on the health and well-being of citizens,” they point out.
