Highest eu birth rates in ireland

IRELAND has the highest birth rates in the EU at 14.4 per 1,000 residents, according to EU population estimates for 2014 released by Eurostat today.

The EU average birth rate is 10.1 per 1,000 residents. According to these figures, Ireland now has a population 4.6 million, which is 0.9% of the EU population.

Ireland also has one of the lowest death rates per thousand in the EU (6.4%), behind Cyprus (6.2%). The EU death rate is 9.7 per 1,000 residents. Bulgaria (15.1 per 1,000 residents) has the highest death rate, followed by Latvia (14.3%), Lithuania (13.7%), Hungary (12.8%), Romania (12.7%) and Croatia (12%).

As a consequence, Ireland also had the highest increase in population in 2014 (based on the difference between live births and deaths expressed per 1,000 residents) at 8.1%. This was by far the highest change and was followed by Cyprus (+4.7%), France and Luxembourg (both +4%) and the United Kingdom (+3.2%). The EU average increase during the same period was +0.3%.

With 16% of the total EU population, Germany (81.2 million residents) continues to be the most populated EU country, ahead of France (with 13.1% of the EU population and 66.4 million residents), the United Kingdom (12.9% of EU population and 64.8 million residents), Italy (12% and 60.8 million), Spain (9.1%) and Poland (7.5%).

On January 1 this year, the population of the European Union was estimated at 508.2 million, compared with 506.9 million on the same day last year. During the year 2014, 5.1 million babies were born in the EU while 4.9 million persons died, meaning that the EU recorded a positive natural change of its population of 0.2 million, double that of 2013.