Births per woman of a childbearing age in the country continued to decline this year, falling below the replacement level for the first time, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported.
Based on the preliminary results of the PSA’s 2022 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), fertility rate of Filipino women aged 15 to 49 years dipped to 1.9 children from 2.7 five years ago.
According to the PSA, fertility is low among adolescents with 25 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 years, while it peaks at 105 births per 1,000 among women aged 25 to 29 years and then decreases thereafter.
“Generally, the fertility has been declining in all age groups since 2008, except in the younger and older women aged 15 to 19 and 45 to 49 years, respectively,” PSA said.
Specifically, fertility rates for women aged 20 to 24 years steadily declined from 163 births per 1,000 women in 2008 to 84 births per 1,000 women in 2022. This was also observed in women aged 25 to 44 years.
By area of residence, women living in rural areas had slightly higher fertility rate of 2.2 children per woman as compared to those living in urban areas with 1.7 children per woman.
PSA also noted that the latest fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1, which represents the ideal rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next.
In the 2022 NDHS, women were asked whether they wanted more children and, if so, how long they would prefer to wait before the birth of the next child.
About half, or 48.8 percent, of currently married women aged 15 to 49 years—including women who are sterilized or whose husbands are sterilized—want no more children.
“The percentage of women who want no more children increases with the number of living children, from 4.3 percent with no living children to 72.0 percent with six or more children,” PSA said.
Meanwhile, around 13.9 percent of women want to have another child within the next two years and 17.4 percent want to wait at least two years before having another child.
Moreover, less than one percent (0.2 percent) of women want another child but have not decided when, and 8.1 percent are undecided about having more children.
The 2022 NDHS is the seventh Demographic and Health Survey conducted in the Philippines since 1993.
Overall, 27,821 women aged 15-49 from 30,372 households were successfully interviewed in the 2022 NDHS.
The 2022 NDHS provides estimates at the national level, for urban and rural areas, and for each of the 17 regions in the Philippines. A comprehensive analysis of the data will be presented in a final report in 2023.