Number of Irish teenagers giving birth falls slightly, CSO finds

The number of teenagers giving birth fell slightly between 2016 and 2017, from 1,098 to 1,041, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The latest Vital Statistics report shows since 2001 the number of teenage births has fallen by 66 per cent, from 3,087.

Of the 1,041 teenage mothers last year, 923 were first-time mothers. Nineteen were aged 15 years or younger and 54 were 16 years of age. In 2017, 537 were aged 19, of whom 76 had another child or other children.

The statistics for the last quarter of 2017 show a small fall in the overall birth-rate compared with the same period in 2016. While there were 14,709 births in the last three months of 2017, there were 14,740 (0.2 per cent more) in the last quarter of 2016.

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There were 7,593 boys born between October and December 2017 and 7,116 girls, born to mothers with a average age of 32.9 years, the same as in the fourth quarter of 2016. The average age of first time mothers was 31 in the fourth quarter of 2017.

In the last quarter of 2017, the average age of first-time mothers outside marriage was 28.7, while the average of all mothers outside marriage was 30.3. This compares with 28.9 years and 30.4 years respectively for the same period 2016.

Dublin city had the highest number of births registered at the end of last year, with 1,699; 11.6 per cent of total live births in the State, followed by Cork county with 1,276 (8.7 per cent). Leitrim had the fewest, with 121 registered (0.8 per cent), in the last quarter of 2017.

Of the 14,709 births in the fourth quarter of last year, 11,449 were to mothers of Irish nationality, compared with 11,343 in the same period in 2016.

Some 7,115 deaths were registered in the fourth quarter of 2017, of which 3,605 were male and 3,510 were female. This is 2 per cent more deaths than in the same period of 2016, when there were 6,955 deaths.