Bulgaria has been named as the country with the youngest first-time mothers, with women giving birth at 26 years and six months on average, a new study by The Calculator Site has found.
The Calculator Site’s study, which analysed fertility and life expectancy data across 37 countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), found that the mean age of first-time mothers is 29 years and three months, with having children later in life corresponding to longer-living grandparents.
After Bulgaria, Turkish mothers tended to have their first child at 26 years and seven months, with women in Chile and Romania having their first child just after their 27th birthday.
At the other end of the scale, the oldest first-time mothers among the countries evaluated were in Korea (32 years and seven months), Spain and Italy (31 years and seven months).
In total, women in 13 countries become mothers after their 30th birthday, with another 10 countries doing so just before that, at the age of 29, the study found.
The study also found that a country’s wealth is ‘irrelevant’ in terms of whether people choose to start families, however, it is linked to life expectancy.
Wealth and life expectancy
Wealthier nations generally have longer life expectancies, but there isn’t a clear correlation between GDP per capita and fertility rates. For example, the US, ranked sixth in wealth, has the fifth youngest mothers, while Greece, with the eighth lowest GDP per capita, has the seventh oldest mothers in the OECD community.
According to the study, in more affluent countries, grandchildren tend to have more time with their grandparents due to higher life expectancies. The age at which their mother starts a family seems to have no significant impact on this trend.
The generation gap
“There are so many myths around whether it is good or bad that women delay having children, whether richer nations are going through a generational crisis on the backdrop of older mothers and ageing populations, of the widening gap between generations,” commented Alastair Hazell of The Calculator Site.
“For one, we were very surprised to learn that no two contributing factors – delayed births and shorter life expectancy – occur simultaneously in any of the evaluated countries. So it would appear that there is no country generally losing out because women tend to delay having children.
“Ageing populations and generational differences are a testament to a number of factors, including advanced healthcare, and the economic implications to sustain them are complex, but a woman who has children to advance her career is part of the solution, not the problem.”
For the purposes of the study, life expectancy estimates represent the average years that individuals, both male and female, reaching the age of 65, are expected to live in each country. These estimates are primarily from 2021 or the most recent publicly available figures.
Researchers concentrated on intergenerational variances, operating under the assumption that life expectancy serves as an indicator of a potential grandparent’s age, rather than confirming if they are actually grandparents. Data on life expectancy and fertility originated from the OECD, while GDP per capita estimates were derived from 2024 projections by the International Monetary Fund.
Age of First-Time Mothers by Country
| Country | Age of First-Time Mothers |
|---|---|
| Italy | 31 years, 7 months |
| Spain | 31 years, 7 months |
| Luxembourg | 31 years, 3 months |
| Ireland | 31 years, 2 months |
| Switzerland | 31 years, 2 months |
| Greece | 31 years |
| Portugal | 30 years, 4 months |
| Netherlands | 30 years, 3 months |
| Germany | 30 years, 1 month |
| Norway | 30 years |
| Denmark | 30 years |
| Austria | 29 years, 10 months |
| Sweden | 29 years, 9 months |
| Finland | 29 years, 9 months |
| Belgium | 29 years, 6 months |
