The economic crisis has drastically reduced the birth rate in Europe over the last decade . As can be seen from a study carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), the greatest effect is seen in young adults, under 25 years of age, which indicates that in these ten years the age chosen for form a family in the face of the uncertain situation of the labor market, especially in young couples who have not yet had their first child, according to the authors of the work in the journal Demographic Research .
Expert calculations indicate that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate is equivalent to a 0.1% decrease in the birth rate in the overall EU count, a percentage that rises to 0.3% in the EU. southern countries.
In Spain, the number of births, which reached the maximum of the last three decades in 2008 (519,779 were born), has not stopped decreasing since then and as the economic crisis progressed, accumulating a fall of 12.8% in the last four years, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
