February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — With the buoyant economy boosting confidence, Irish women have a least temporarily reversed a trend and are having more babies, with the birth rate last year at its highest since 1994. Still, at least one population expert believes the long-term trend will continue downward as fertility rates remain low.
The birth rate is the number of births in a given population in a given interval of time. The fertility rate is the number of children on average born to a woman.
The feel-good factor resulted in the highest number of births last year in five years, according to figures from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office. Other figures, meanwhile, show the rate of marriages is steadily declining and the number of single mothers has soared, with one in four children now born to an unmarried mother.
The figures have wide-ranging implications for planners, policy makers and politicians. Indeed, throughout Europe, birth rates are in a rapid and sustained decline, exceeded only in times of war, plague or economic crisis. As a result, many societies, Ireland included, may one day find themselves with an unusually large number of elderly people and not enough young people to support them. A recent New York Times article on the subject note that the change “will affect every program — from health care and education to pension plans and military spending — that require public funds.”
The potential problems for Ireland may not be as acute as elsewhere in Europe. A spokesman for CSO said there had also been a “natural” increase in population (the number of births over deaths) between the 1991 and 1996 five-yearly census of 92,131.
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Ireland’s birth rate bottomed out in 1994, with 13.4 births per thousand and has steadily risen since then to 14.3, leaving Ireland with the highest birth rate in the European Union. Indeed, Irish mothers are producing children 50 percent faster than Italy, Spain and France (all 9.1 percent). Only the Luxembourgers, at 13.4, approach Ireland’s level.
Unsustainable population level
Still, despite the relatively high numbers, Ireland’s fertility rate has actually fallen in the last 20 years. Because Irish families of earlier generations tended to be quite large, that drop is a dramatic one, more than 40 percent, in fact, putting the country on a par with Italy and France.
To be sure, Ireland has not produced enough children to sustain the population level since 1990.
What statisticians call the “total period fertility rate” needs to be at a level of 2.1 to keep the population replacing itself. Last year in Ireland it was 1.92, compared to 3.32 in 1980. Italy, meanwhile, gas a rate of 1.2, the lowest every recorded among humans. By comparison, according to U.N. population figures, the average fertility rate in the Third World has dropped from 6 to 3 in the last decade alone.
Professor Jerry Sexton of the Economic and Social Research Institute said he doesn’t think the figures reveal a fundamental shift upward in the birth rate.
“I think the economy has a lot to do with it,” he said. “We came out of a fairly deep recession and people are now confident and more sure about their circumstances. You can’t really tell how deep-rooted the change is until time passes and economic conditions might not be so good.”
He also said that inward migration would be a major factor in the increase. Many of the returning emigrants and arriving immigrants attracted by the record job-creation levels are in the 25 to 35 age group — the main childbearing age.
“If the trend is sustained, it will obviously have implications for the economy in the areas of housing and education, but I don’t think the change is substantial enough to cause us to get into a state of excitement about it,” Sexton said.
“In changed economic circumstances, the downward trend could return. My own feeling is that most of it tied up with the economic conditions and I would be very slow to attribute a sea change to the overall movement, which has been downward since 1980.
“The increase in births in recent years is nothing compared to the massive changes over the previous 15 to 20 years, though the total fertility level here is still much higher than in other European countries.
“If I was doing a projection 20 years hence, I don’t think I would suggest an increase in the present birth rate. I would forecast a fall in the birth rate in the long term but I wouldn’t see it dipping in the immediate future.
“We have certainly had the most dramatic fall in Europe. The number of births in 1980 was something like 74,000, and now, even with the increase, it is only just over 52,000. That is a huge decline over that period.”
Unmarried mothers
The most startling statistics in the birth figures are the rocketing number of children born to unmarried mothers. At 26.6 percent of births, it is two and a half times the rate just 10 years ago.
Sexton said the figures did not just apply to mothers living alone. “Many of them would be born to women in stable relationships with a partner but not married,” he said. “Social attitudes to single mothers have changed. There are a lot of supports for single mothers now and social attitudes have changed, so it is not the difficult experience it was in the past.”
The regional breakdown indicates Waterford has the highest number of single-mother births in the country, but this is thought to result from the local centralization of hospital services in the city for surrounding counties in the area.