A third of babies born to foreign mothers

The average age for having a first child is now 30.8 years for Swiss women Keystone

More than one baby in three was born to a foreign mother in Switzerland last year, double the rate in 1990, the Swiss Statistical Office revealed on Tuesday. 

The office said one reason for this increase – from 19.6% to 38.7% – is the fact that proportionally there are more foreign women of child-bearing age than Swiss women and they have, on average, more children. 

Swiss women also have children later – the average age has gone up from 29.3 years in 1990 to 32.1 years in 2013. The average age for having a first child is now 30.8 years. 

For non-Swiss women aged 15-24, the fertility rate is four times higher than for similarly aged Swiss women, the office added. 

The number of women living in Switzerland who don’t hold Swiss citizenship reached 900,000 in 2013, that is 22.1% of the female population. This figure is up from 14.4% in 1990. 

Three-quarters of foreign women who gave birth in Switzerland last year were European, with a quarter of those coming from the former Yugoslavia, 19% from Germany, 13% from Portugal, 8.7% from Italy, 6.8% from France, 4.7% from Turkey and 3.3% from Spain.