Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss birth rate sees major decline

babies
The number of births dropped by 8% last year. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Significantly fewer babies were born in Switzerland in 2022 than in the previous year. At the same time, infant mortality increased slightly, according to a report by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

After the child-rich year of 2021, the number of births in 2022 fell by about 8% to 82,371, according to the statistics on natural population movements published by the FSO on Thursday.

+ Why was there a baby boom in 2021?

According to the FSO, there are several possible reasons for this: the financial situation and fears about the future may have influenced family planning in Switzerland, but the child-rich year of 2021 may also have had an impact.

Infant mortality increased from 3.1 deaths per 1000 live births to 3.8. Infant mortality is caused primarily by deaths within the first 24 hours, the FSO said. About 60% of deaths in the first year of life occurred during the first day.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.


News

wingsuit jumper

More

Fatal wingsuit jump accident in canton Ticino

This content was published on A 36-year-old man from Ticino lost his life on Saturday in Val Malvaglia, in the north of canton Ticino, during a wingsuit jump from a plane.

Read more: Fatal wingsuit jump accident in canton Ticino

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR