Of the approximately 200 million family households in the European Union, just under a quarter (24.3 percent) have children. At the same time, 12.1 percent of households have one child, 9.3 percent have two, and only three percent of households have three or more children, reports Tportal.hrquoted by Rador Radio Romania.

Over the past ten years, the number of European households has increased by 6.9 percent, approaching last year’s figure of 200 million. During the same period, by 2.4 percentage points. the percentage of households with at least one child decreased.

The highest share of households with children was recorded in Slovakia (33.9 percent), Ireland (32.2 percent) and Cyprus (30.6 percent), and the lowest in Finland (18.4 percent), Germany (20.1 percent ) and the Netherlands (21.8 percent). ).

Among households with children, almost half (49.50%) have one child, 38.1% have two children, and 12.4% have three or more children.

Households with one child are the most represented in all EU countries, with the exception of the Netherlands, where households with two children have a higher percentage. Among families with children, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Malta, Lithuania, Latvia, Italy, Spain and Hungary have more than half of households with one child.

Among households with children in all EU countries, the least are those with three or more children. The largest number of such households are in Ireland (22.3 percent), Sweden (21.2 percent) and Finland (19 percent), and the least in Portugal (6.3 percent), Bulgaria (6.5 percent) and Italy (7.4 percent).

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Three quarters of families in Croatia have no children

According to Eurostat, there are 1.49 million households in Croatia, of which almost three-quarters (or 1.1 million) do not have children. Among households with children, households with one child predominate with a share of 44.7 percent. Just under 40 percent of households with children have two children and only 15.9 percent have three or more.

Data on the composition of households in Croatia, as in most other European countries, confirm unfavorable demographic trends that have existed for many years.

Data on fertility trends in recent years are even more worrying. It was recently announced that only 33,883 babies were born in Croatia last year, the lowest number in 100 years. At the same time, 56,979 people died, that is, the population of Croatia naturally decreased only last year by the same amount as the population of a city the size of Vukovar.

An alarming labor shortage

No county in Croatia recorded more births than deaths, and in seven of them the number of deaths was at least twice as high as the number of births. The weakest indicators are in Lichko-Senska, the oldest county, where the life index in 2022 was 40, that is, only 40 children were born for every 100 deaths.

For a positive natural increase, the vital index must be higher than 100. There is no such index in any county, and the closest to it are Zagreb and Međimurje counties, where the vital index was 71.

Unfavorable demographic trends have already led to a looming labor shortage in almost every field, and experts warn that the problem will become more widespread in the future. In his recent analysis, the chief economist of HUP (Croatian Employers’ Association), Hrvoje Stojic, singled out adverse demographic trends as the main threat to economic growth in the medium term.

According to his forecasts, Croatia currently needs at least 200,000 foreign workers to meet the needs of the labor market.