For the second consecutive year, Portugal’s birth rate is growing with the first half figures for 2016 showing there were an additional 2,639 newborn screening tests carried out than in the same period last year.
In all, 42,758 tests have been made in the first six months of 2016. This compares well with the crisis years between 2011 and 2014 when a worrying downward trend quickly developed.
Many Portuguese couples delayed having a child because of their financial situation and the wider fiscal malaise gripping the economy.
Sociologist Albertino Gonçalves said today that, "six years is a long time for an economic crisis. It is not normal to have so protracted a crisis so it is natural now that there is a great desire for optimism."
Many couples will be well aware of the financial mess successive governments have made of the economy and have decided to have kids in a fatalistic, 'now or never' frame of mind.
Amorous couples in Viseu led the field with an increase in the birth rate for the region of 20% but more cautious couples in Guarda and Portalegre remain unconvinced that this is a good time to be having children as the birth rate dropped in both regions.
The demographic problem is not only caused by the low birth rate from couples in Portugal, but by the number of fertile Portuguese that have decided to leave the country and try their luck elsewhere.
Emigration figures show that 285,000 Portuguese have left the country for good in the last four years: a further concern is that immigration has decreased. Both make the job of maintaining the population level an impossibility without a major influx of immigrants or the banning of contraception.
Rui Pena Pires from the Centre for Emigration said in June that "The return of significant numbers of today's emigrants is a mirage."
Comments
I am not sure from your report, Ed, who has had this stupid idea. We should get into a similar pickle as the Irish are in over abortion law reform.
If finance is the problem which prevents young couples from reproducing, then finance is also the answer. Child allowance, tax credits for families, paying mothers to stay at home are all within the realms of the possible. We need a government with the vision to introduce these payments, and to reduce in some other area.