Slightly fewer children were born in the Netherlands last year than the year before

More than 164,000 children were born in the Netherlands last year, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) announced on Friday. That is slightly less than the year before. Just over 167,500 children were born in 2022.

In 2023, the average number of children per woman was 1.43, the lowest figure to date. Since 2010, fewer children have been born per woman on average. This is because more women have decided to remain childless, the CBS concluded in December. The number of children per mother has remained the same.

Last year, more than 75,000 women became mothers for the first time; in 2022 that total was 78,000. Mothers who had a child for the first time were on average 30.3 years old. Of the 164,000 children born, 37 percent were a second child, 12 percent were a mother's third child and 5 percent a fourth or subsequent child.

Most women had children between the ages of 30 and 35 in 2023. For every 1,000 women in that age group, 117 children were born. "Ten years ago, young motherhood was more common. Motherhood at a later age is now slightly more common," the CBS said.

An average of ten children were born for every thousand women under the age of 25. Eight children were born for every thousand women aged 45 or older.

In 2022, the average age for the first child among mothers in the European Union was 29.7 years, according to figures from Eurostat and CBS. In six other EU member states, the average age was higher than in the Netherlands. That average was oldest in Italy, at 31.7 years, and in Spain at 31.6 years. The youngest new mothers on average were in Bulgaria, where women had their first child at 26.6 years of age on average.

Dutch fathers are on average 2.5 years older than mothers at the birth of the first child. In 2022, the average age for fathers was 32.8 years, according to Statistics Netherlands. Data has not yet been compiled about the average age of new fathers last year.

In 2021, 179,000 children were born, the highest number in a decade. The statistics office suspects that this baby boom was related to the coronavirus measures.