The number of teenage births in England and Wales has been on decline and is now down more than half from the 33 births per 1,000 women in 1990.
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“Women aged 40 and over now have a higher fertility rate than women aged under 20 – this was last recorded in the 1940s”. The fertility rate of women aged 40 and over has more than trebled since 1981, the ONS reported. And this reduction in the younger age group has been spiraling down since 1999.
Meanwhile, pregnancies have soared in older age groups from 5.3 per 1,000 in 1990.
The ONS data also showed the average age of mothers giving birth in 2015 was 30.3.
Overall, there were just under 700,000 live births recorded in England and Wales in 2015 – a 0.4 per cent increase on figures recorded for the previous year.
The data also shows that fertility rates have dropped in all age groups under 25 while increasing for all age groups 30 and over.
Women over 40s were found to have 15.2 births per 1000 women, while women in their teens had 14.5 births per 1,000 women.
“This may be due to a number of factors such as increased female participation in higher education and the labour force, the increasing importance of a career, the rising costs of childbearing, labour market uncertainty and housing factors”. Over 24,000 more deaths were registered between January and March 2015 compared with the same period in 2014.
In the most developed nations, women have been delaying to have children to later in life owing to it fertility rates have been increasing among older women.
“While the risks should never be overplayed, men and women should be aware that reproductive outcomes are poorer in older women”, said Balen.
A spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said the trend towards older motherhood was “here to stay”.
The group advised that instead of complaining about this new development, people should pursue to understand and offer support for the maternity reasons women make. Last year’s 27.5 per cent of babies born to mothers who were themselves born overseas compared with 11.6 per cent in 1990.
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Births outside marriage reached the 47 per cent mark in 2011 but numbers have steadied since, possibly because of higher rates of marriage among immigrant mothers than British-born mothers.
