After years of declining births in Austria, there was a trend reversal in 2021. As an “official birth list” by the baby food manufacturer Nutricia Milupa Austria shows, the domestic hospitals recorded 85,690 births in “pandemic year two”, an increase of 3.12 percent – Styria had the highest increase with around seven percent.
Most babies were born in Vienna with 20,794 (plus 1.14 percent), followed by Upper Austria with 15,3131 (plus 2.18 percent) and Lower Austria with 13,829 (plus 4.1 percent). Behind it – as a percentage climber of the year – is Styria with 11,503 births (plus 7.17 percent). “In a figurative sense, our birth list also always paints a picture of the social mood. If the 2020 pandemic in Austria led to a sustained decline in the number of births, the waiting period in terms of family planning apparently came to an end in 2021,” says Nichole Duttine, Managing Director of Nutricia Milupa Austria.
However, it is unclear whether the trend is due to growing confidence or a learned routine in dealing with the pandemic and lockdowns. Compared to the past few years, however, the numbers certainly “suggest a small baby boom,” said Duttine.
The Nutricia Milupa birth list 2021 also showed the country’s clinics with the highest birth rates. The Landeskrankenhaus-Universitätsklinikum Graz led the Austrian ranking with 4,245 births (plus 10.46 percent), followed by the St. Josef Hospital Vienna with 4,134 (plus 6.19 percent) and the third-placed Kepler University Hospital Linz with 3,633 births (plus 4.04 percent).
According to the company, the Nutricia Milupa birth list differs slightly from the birth statistics of Statistics Austria in relation to the absolute numbers. This is due to different survey bases: Nutricia Milupa records the number of deliveries in hospitals and clinics, while Statistics Austria records the number of all newborns. The latter also includes, for example, births in birth centers and home births.