Births in EU drop by a record 5.4% in 2023

The number of babies born in the EU was down 5.4 percent to 3.67 million in 2023, the largest drop in decades, official data showed on March 7, underscoring the bloc's demographic issues.

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The fertility rate across the EU's 27 countries stood at 1.38 live births per woman, down from 1.46 in 2022, and well below the "replacement level" of 2.1, at which a population is stable.

"This is the largest annual decline recorded since 1961," the first year for which EU-wide aggregate data is available, the bloc's statistical agency, Eurostat, said of the drop in births.