The Copenhagen hospital, the Rigshopitalet, has recently published a report that claims that the birth rate among Danish women is “dangerously low”. In 2012, there were 57,916 children born in Denmark, down from over 65,000 in 2008 (the total population of Denmark is around 5.5million). More than one in five couples in Denmark are childless and the total fertility rate of the country (1.7 children per woman) is below the replacement threshold of 2.1.
Why is the birth rate low? The report identifies:
“Part of the problem is that there are fewer women in the country of childbearing age. Couples are also waiting longer to start families, which often makes conception harder, and recent studies have also pointed to low sperm quality in Danish men.
Researchers from Rigshospitalet encouraged the government to make it more attractive for young couples to start a family.
‘Many wait too long to have children, creating a greater need for fertility treatments,’ Søren Ziebe, a clinical supervisor at Rigshospitalet, wrote in the report. ‘There is a need to raise awareness, as the problem is approaching epidemic levels.’
Ziebe and the other researchers pointed out that in the 1970s, the average age that a woman gave birth to her first child was 24 years old. Today, the average age is 29 and the number of women that are waiting until they are over 35 to conceive is increasing.”
Read more at Mercator.Net.
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