Portugal’s population dips but remains above 10 million

The population of European Union nations was estimated to be slightly more than 510 million on 1 January 2016.

This was a rise of nearly 2 million people from the last estimate of 508 million the previous year.

During 2015, statistics show that 5.1 million babies arrived but at the same time 5.2 million people died. This resulted in the first time that the EU recorded a negative natural change in its population.

The increase, according to the Eurostat officials, was due to net migration.

The most populous countries continued to be Germany (82.2 million), France (66.7 million), Britain (65.3 million) and Italy (60.7 million).

Together these four make up more than 50% of the total EU population.

Spain is the fifth largest country with 46.4 million folks.

Portugal contributed 10.3 million souls. Its share of the EU population is 2%.

Although there has been much speculation about the brain drain from both Portugal and Spain, the figures – at least the official ones - are not so dramatic.

In 2015 there were 10,374,800 people in Portugal and a year later the figure was 10,341,300. This was a drop of 33,500 people, a fluctuation of -3.2%. While it is likely that some will have migrated, others will have been accounted for through the natural cycles of births and deaths.

An acute factor in Portugal’s declining numbers is its low birth rate, the second lowest in the EU after Italy. In Portugal there were 8.3 babies born per every 1,000 residents.

By contrast, the highest rates were in Ireland, Britain and France.

In 2015, live births in Portugal numbered 85,500 while the number of people dying was 108,500. This resulted in a natural change of -23%.

The situation in Spain was even less changed - from 46,450,000 last year to 46,438,400 at the start of 2016, representing a change of -0.2%

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