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Demography and socio-economic situation
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3. Mother’s age distribution (I)
Definition Calculation Relevant dimensions and subgroups Preferred data type and data source Data availability Data periodicity Rationale Remarks References Work to do

DOCUMENTATION SHEET FOR:

Indicator: 3. Mother’s age distribution

SHORTLIST sub-division: A) Demographic and socio-economic factors

Status: implementation section

Date last modification of documentation sheet: 21-02-2011

Compared to previous version documentation sheet (16-07-2010) the following issues were adapted:

  • Correction/clarification; definition and calculation adapted to match list of operational indicators, i.e. this indicator provides relative figures for the high risk groups instead of absolute figures per 5 year-age group. As Eurostat only provides total number of live births and live births per one year age group of the mother, percentages as requested by ECHIM are not readily available and need to be computed from the Eurostat data.
  • Correction; subgroups: SES (educational status) is only relevant for mothers aged 35 and over, as teenage mothers often will not have finished their education yet.

PDF version of documentation sheet

Operational indicators (Excel-file)

Definition

Distribution of live births by mother's age at last birthday

(NB: age distribution of mothers at delivery would be preferable; see remarks)

Calculation

Percentage of live births in mothers younger than 20 years, and percentage of live births in mothers of 35 years of age and older.

Relevant dimensions and subgroups

  • Calendar year
  • Country
  • Region (according to ISARE recommendations).
  • Socio-economic status (educational level. ISCED 3 aggregated groups: 0-2; 3+4; 5+6), only relevant for mothers aged 35 and over.

Preferred data type and data source

Preferred data type

  1. National population statistics
  2. Birth registers and perinatal data bases
  3. Perinatal surveys

Preferred source:

Eurostat.

Data availability

Eurostat: Data available for the EU-27 in the Eurostat database. Regional data available for most Member States (from 1990 onwards, NUTS-II level). Data by socio-economic status (education) is available for CZ, DK, EE, GR, HU, MT, AT, PL. PT, RO, SI, SK, FI, SE and NO for years 2007 and 2008. The ISARE project on regional data has collected data on mother’s age (indicators: Number of births by mother’s age, and: Percentage of births by maternal age).

Data periodicity

Data are updated annually.

Rationale

Both early and late childbearing are associated with higher than average rates of preterm birth, growth restriction and mortality in the perinatal period.

Remarks

  • Currently Eurostat data is based on number of live births, i.e. multiple births are counted multiple times, and stillbirths are not counted.
  • PERISTAT is an EU-funded project on evaluating and monitoring perinatal health in Europe. PERISTAT recommendation, which is scientifically preferable, is to calculate mother’s age distribution based on number of mothers (i.e. deliveries). Currently PERISTAT has data only for years 2000 (15 countries) and 2004 (26 countries). Next data round is planned to be for 2010 data.
  • PERISTAT plans in the next phase to explicitly work on integrating their recommendations into the regular Eurostat data collections.
  • Eurostat presents total numbers of live births and live births per one year age group of mothers (15-49 years), so percentages as requested by ECHIM need to be calculated from these figures.

References

Work to do

Monitor Eurostat and PERISTAT developments regarding indicator definition and data collection

ECHIM Products website, version 1.3,  February 2011, ECHIM project.

Homepage Echim.org