The Slovak population is aging, women are giving birth to fewer and fewer children
Female fertility in Slovakia has a long-term downward trend and the population is aging. This was shown by the results of the Census of Population, Homes and Apartments (SODB) 2021. Demographer Branislav Šprocha pointed out that he assumes the assumptions according to which women born especially in the second half of the 1970s will have significantly less than two children.
“The data obtained confirmed the continued decline in fertility, with the generation of women from the second half of the 1960s being the last to have an average of more than two children,” he said. In the youngest generations, according to demography, there is an increase in the variability of reproduction and the reduction of families and the number of siblings in them.
Šprocha explained that the main developmental sign of the final fertility of women in Slovakia is its intergenerational gradual decline, which also means the latest results of the reading of the population.
“While the average number of live births for women born in the early 1940s was over 2.5 children, in the generations from the early 1950s it was only about 2.3 children, and for those born a decade later about 2. 2 child,” he zoomed in.
Based on data obtained from women in the last decade of their reproductive years, he predicts that almost a quarter of women in the relevant generation could have one child, and more than 15 percent of women will be childless.
“In the youngest analyzed population years, we are witnessing a decrease in the probability that a childless woman will become a mother by the end of the reproductive period, as well as that a woman with one child will give birth to another,” she added.