Turkey’s fertility rate outpaces 27 EU member-states

The European Statistics Office (Eurostat) has published data on the 2019 fertility rates in 27 EU member states and the candidate countries.

Eurostat data revealed that 4.17 million children were born in the EU in 2019, continuing a decreasing trend that started after 2008.

Turkey emerges as most fertile

Turkey surpassed the 27 EU member countries with a fertility rate of 1.88. It saw a total of 1,183, 652 live births in 2019, of which 51.3 percent were boys and 48.7 percent girls, Turkey's Statistical Institute (TurkStat)'s data showed.

The total fertility rate refers to the average number of live births that a woman would have under the assumption that she survived to the end of her reproductive life which is 15-49 years and had a child according to a given age-specific fertility rate.

While Turkey's total fertility rate was 2.38 in 2001, this rate was 1.88 in 2019. It means that a woman gave approximately 1.88 live births during her reproductive life in 2019. This showed that fertility remained below the population's replacement level of 2.1.

Sociologist Fatih Aysan says there are multiple reasons for this decline. 

He says Turkey’s population is ageing, and the drop in fertility, which in the 1960s was around six children per woman and around four in the 1980s, is around two nowadays.

READ MORE: Turkey's population is ageing and the fertility rate is falling — report

France takes the lead

Among the EU Member States, France registers the highest total fertility rate in 2019, with 1.86 live births per woman, followed by Romania, with 1.77 live births per woman and Ireland, Sweden and Czechia all with 1.71 live births per woman, according to Eurostat figures.

On the other hand, Malta saw the lowest total fertility rate in 2019 with 1.14 live births per woman, Spain with 1.23 live births per woman, Italy with 1.27 live births per woman, Cyprus with 1.33 live births per woman, Greece and Luxembourg both with 1.34.