Women in Almeria have most babies in Andalucia

    The Junta de Andalucia has just published data on births in the region for 2007 with a total of 96,150 babies being born last year. The average number of babies per mother in the whole of Andalucia was 1.5 but the province with the highest baby to mother ratio was Almeria with 1.59 babies per mother. Almeria also has by far the highest proportion of children born to foreign mothers with almost a third of babies; 29.45%, being parented by non Spanish mothers, the province with the second highest proportion is Malaga with 19% of babies born last year having foreign mothers. Only ten years ago the percentages of babies born to mothers from outside Spain were 2.88 in Almeria and 4.43 in Malaga. On the increase too is the number of babies born to unmarried women, almost 35 per cent in Almeria last year, up from 15% ten years ago and 2.76% thirty years ago. Curiously all the provinces in Andalucia have a similar proportion of births to unmarried mums, around thirty per cent, except the two land-locked provinces; Jaen and Cordoba, which both have a figure of twenty per cent.