STA, 4 January 2019 - A total of 19,123 births were given in Slovenian maternity wards in 2018, down from 19,706 in 2017, which is a 3% drop, according to unofficial figures released by the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ). This means that the trend of falling recorded since 2011 continues.
The final number of children born in 2018 is not available yet, but given that an average 3% of newborns come from multiple pregnancies, the NIJZ believes almost 19,500 babies were born in Slovenia last year.
Since the NIJZ started gathering birth statistics in 1988, 2003 was the year when the fewest children were born in Slovenia - only 16,917.
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The number of newborns was then increasing until 2010, when 22,002 babies were born, but the trend reversed in 2011, with the number of newborns dropping to 21,567.
However, the NIJZ says on its website that last year's drop was much bigger than those in the 2011-2017 period.
Meanwhile, the largest number of babies in the country with a two-million population in the past 30 years - as many as 26,442 - was born 1988.
