The EU’s total fertility rate fell to 1.34 live births per woman in 2024 — the lowest level recorded since the data series began in 2001.
The total fertility rate is the average number of live births a woman would have over her lifetime based on current age-specific birth rates, Eurostat noted in a release on Tuesday.
Over the past 20 years, the EU figure has stayed below 2.10 live births per woman, a level often used as a “replacement rate” in population studies, varying between 1.34 and 1.57.
New regional figures show wide variation across the bloc. Among 1,165 EU regions with available data in 2024, 439 regions (37.7%) recorded fertility rates below the EU average, 714 regions (61.3%) were above it, and 12 matched the EU average.
Higher rates clustered in parts of Bulgaria and France
Rates of at least 1.75 live births per woman were recorded in 14 regions in Bulgaria and 14 in France, as well as in six regions in Germany and three in Slovenia, Eurostat said.
Two regions each reached that level in Hungary, the Netherlands and Romania, with single regions doing so in Ireland, Greece, Croatia and Slovakia.
At the other end of the scale, fertility rates were “particularly low” in Spain — especially in the north-west and in certain island regions — and across much of Italy, notably Sardegna.
The lowest rates, below 1.00 live births per woman, were recorded in 16 Spanish regions, seven Polish regions, five Italian regions, three Greek regions, and two regions each in Germany and Lithuania.
