Wednesday, December 11, 2002

A story released today by the BBC News reports that according to recent figures released by the Office for National Statistics, the birth rate in England and Wales has fallen to an all-time low.

The falling birth rate has been linked to more women opting for a career, work pressures and the higher rate of relationship breakdown.

The highest birth rate was recorded in 1964, when the average woman had 2.93 children.

The figures also show that over the last decade there has been a 10% rise in births outside marriage, from 30% in 1991 to 40% in 2001.

Melissa Dear, of the Family Planning Association, said that the falling birth rate was partly a reflection of the failure to provide women with adequate support.

"Many organizations fail to implement child-friendly policies," she said.

The same report also revealed variations in birth patterns across different regions.

Women in London are most likely to abort a pregnancy. Almost a third (32.5%) of all conceptions in the capital are terminated, compared with less than a fifth (19.1%) in the east of England.

Couples in the north east are having the fewest children, with an average of 1.58 per woman, compared with a high of 1.74 in the West Midlands.

Under-25s had the highest number of births outside marriage - almost 90% of births to teenagers and 63% of births to women aged 20 to 24.

But there was a drop in the rate of pregnancies among 15 to 17-year-olds, which stood at 43.8 per 1,000 conceptions in 2000, down 3% on 1999.