Fertility survey. 2018

Idescat has conducted a study of the INE’s 2018 Fertility survey, which focuses solely on biological children born to women aged between 18 and 55. Analysis of this study shows high levels of infertility at all ages, although we should highlight the 26.7% of women aged between 40 and 55 who didn’t have any biological children. Moreover, at younger ages, 87.5% of women aged below 30 had no biological children, nor did 61.3% of women aged between 30 and 34.

The average number of children born to the female population aged between 18 and 55 in 2018 totalled 0.97. The fertility of women under the age of 40 totalled 0.60 children, while that of women aged between 40 and 55 totalled 1.34. 26.7% of the latter group of women had no children, while a third of those who did had only one child (33.3%), more than half had two (53.3%) and 13.4% had three or more.

The fertility behaviour varied in accordance with different factors, including nationality, level of education and employment. In terms of nationality, women of foreign nationality residing in Catalonia had an average of 1.14 children and 57.1% of foreign women under the age of 40 had no children. As for women of Spanish nationality, the figure was 0.93 children per woman and 67.0% of women under 40 had no children. In terms of their level of education, women with higher education had 0.81 children per woman and there was also a higher proportion of women without any children (52.4%). In comparison, women with a lower level of education had 1.47 children per woman while 25.9% had no children. With regard to employment, the increase in women’s participation in the labour market also affected the decline in fertility.

Idescat provides a selection of tables from the 2018 Fertility survey published by the INE. These data show that, in terms of desired fertilit, women would have liked to have more children than they had, around two children per woman (1.93). In relation to their employment situation, 28.6% of women declared that they had fewer children than they would have liked, for employment reasons or to reconcile their family and working lives. In relation to delaying the age for having their first child, a quarter of the women argued that the main reason was the lack of a stable relationship (25.4%) while 20.7% argued employment and reconciliation reasons. Furthermore, the reconciliation of their family and working lives was one of the reasons that women pointed to most often as an impediment to having more children. 16.9% of mothers with children under the age of three sought the help of their grandparents and other relatives to care for them and 20.6% combined nursery school with the help of other family members.

As for birth control, about 65% of women under the age of 30 used contraceptives, a proportion that decreased with age.