Tiredness, weakness, general malaise… Not only is the Rioja demographic pyramid not recovering, but it is suffering a new aggravation in its condition after another relapse that brings it closer to indicators of the worst of the pandemic. The outbreak of the virus, in addition to causing a terrifying … escalation in mortality figures sent many young people’s dreams of becoming motherhood/fatherhood or expanding their family into limbo. This 2024, with the first quarter already over, does not bode well for the generational change beyond migratory movements, according to the data at the end of April made public this Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
In fact, the community suffers another important bite in its census, the largest since SARS-CoV-2 took over the planet in 2020. In the first four months of this year, the number of births in the region has remained at only 613 while the number of deaths has totaled 1,433, which translates into a new negative natural balance, specifically -820, ten more than in the same period of 2023 (636 births and 1,446 deaths). This year, between January and April, is the second result in the last decade, only surpassed by the -1,023 (743 births and 1,766 deaths) in 2020. At the national level, the balance has also been negative, -90,928, at 104,375 births were registered, 1,279 more than in the first four months of 2023, but 195,303 deaths (+583).
The obvious cause is the continuous decline in the birth rate. Mortality figures, although slowly, have begun to return to normal: the 1,424 deaths in 2019 shot up to 1,766 in the initial four-month period of the first year of covid and remained above a thousand and a half in the following year, 1,502 , to gradually decrease in the following: 1,489 between January and April 2022, 1,446 last year and the aforementioned 1,433 in the four months of 2024.
Plummeting and empty cribs
The collapse in Obstetrics and Gynecology operating rooms is, however, overwhelming in La Rioja. If last year, in its entirety, it dropped for the first time, with 1,984, of the 2,000 births (a barrier that was overcome, although with de-escalation, in the four previous years: 2,408 in 2019, 2,318 in 2020, 2,192 in 2021 and 2,191 in 2022), the four-month period now analyzed by the INE is devastating: the 613 births counted in the community between January and April are the highest in the last decade after another drop of 3.6% compared to the same period in 2023. when 636 new Riojans came into the world. The statistics confirm a trend that, today, seems unstoppable and that threatens to leave more and more cribs empty. The optimism after the only rebound in recent history, recorded in 2019 – in the first four months 760 babies were born in the region (63 more than in 2018) – was frustrated by the viral attack and, since then, the birth rate has remained in quarantine : 743 born from January to April 2020, another 712 in the first quarter of 2021, 693 in 2022, 636 in last year, 613 in the current…
The INE statistics also confirm another problem, that of the delay in the age of motherhood and the added difficulty of families choosing to have two or more children. Of the 613 born in La Rioja in the first four months of this year, 284 girls and 329 boys, in four out of ten the mother was over 35 years old: 205 between 35 and 40 years old, 50 between 41 and 44 years old and 7 over 45 years old. Another 200 women gave birth between 30 and 34 years old. The rest, under 29 -40 between 20 and 24 years old, 102 between 25 and 29 years old. In addition, nine babies came into the world with mothers who were teenagers or almost, between 15 and 19 years old.
