Analytics, Demography, Latvia

In his words, the number of births cannot be expected to remain the same in the situation where the number of potential moms is plummeting. Yet in order to figure out if the dropping birth rate is a lasting trend it is necessary to see the next quarter’s data.

Mezs said that over the past five years the number of women of childbearing age, namely 20 to 35 years old, has been dropping even faster than the number of births.

As the young people born in the 1990s are reaching adulthood, Latvia’s birth rate is all likelihood will decline, because the number of babies born in the 1990s was two times smaller than the number of babies born in the 1980s, Mezs said.

The demographer called for a more serious and substantial government support policy, so that those families that choose to have kids did not end up in poverty and received the necessary support.

As reported, there were 4,948 babies born in Latvia in the first quarter of 2017, which is by 365 babies or 6.9 percent less than during the same period in 2016, according to the preliminary demographic data released by the Latvian Central Statistical Bureau. In the first three months of this year, the number of deaths has also grown - 8,031 deaths were registered, which is by 183 deaths or 2.3 percent more than in the same period in 2016.

Natural population growth in Latvia has been negative since 1991. During the first three months of 2017, as the number of deaths exceeded the number of births, Latvia's population declined by 3,083 persons (by 2,535 in the corresponding period of 2016).

According to the preliminary data, Latvia has a population of 1.946 million as on April 1, 2017.