More dogs than children in Malaga province.
Credit: Studio G. Photography – Shutterstock.
Over the last few years, the trend of having dogs or cats instead of children has been on the rise, changing the face of the traditional Costa del Sol family.
In the Malaga province, there are already three times more pets than there are children under the age of 10, according to the Malaga College of Veterinarians. 518,331 dogs, cats, ferrets, and others are included in the statistics, against 154,220 children ten years old or under.
The figures, while curious, raise a foreboding demographic crisis facing the province, as in most of the rest of Spain. For the first time in nearly 50 years the annual number of human births has dropped below 12 thousand in the Malaga province, well below the 1970s when it was above 19 thousand with a total population half of what it is now.
Malaga prefers to start family later
The decision of people not to have children or to delay parenthood is reflected in a broader and more complex trend that covers various social, economic, and cultural factors. A higher cost of living, professional ambitions, and work/life balance are among the reasons given for preferring to not have kids.
Couples are not only having fewer children but also increasingly delaying the age to conceive them. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), in the last decade, the demographic of women over 40 is the one that has been holding up the flagging birth figures the most, with an increase of 21.3 percent in the last decade. While with women between 45 and 49 years old, the amount having babies has grown by 56 percent in just 10 years.
Malaga province continues to grow in population though, with almost twice as many residents as 40 years ago, but mostly through the influx of foreigners. In the first quarter of 2024, Malaga province gained 3,226 more residents, according to the INE. Over 23 percent of them were born outside of Spain, while the national average is just 18 percent.
