Women over 40 are having more babies than the under 20s for the first time in nearly 70 years, official figures for England and Wales show. The Office for National Statistics data showed there were 697,852 live births in 2015. There were 15.2 births per 1,000 women aged over 40, compared with just 14.5 per 1,000 women in their teens. The last time the over 40s had the higher fertility rate was in 1947, in the wake of WWII. The figures show two key trends in who is having children and when in England and Wales. The teenage pregnancy rate has been in long-term decline and has more than halved from the 33 births per 1,000 teenagers in 1990. Meanwhile, pregnancies have soared in older age groups from 5.3 per 1,000 in 1990. The average age of having a child is now 30.3 – a figure that has been increasing since 1975.
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