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The birth of a new baby is a joyous occasion, but in Portugal it's an increasingly rare one. Since the economic crisis hit, the country's birth rate has plummeted. It's now among the lowest in the world. Rising unemployment and poverty mean people are putting off having kids or moving abroad. It's gotten so bad that Portuguese schools and maternity hospitals are now closing. From Lisbon, Lauren Frayer has the story.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: I'm in the waiting room of Portugal's biggest maternity hospital and the room is empty. You can hear the hum of soda machines across the hall. There's only one expectant father here pacing the empty room.
MARIO CARVALHO: I have a son, and I waiting a daughter.
FRAYER: Today?
CARVALHO: I hope.
FRAYER: Mario Carvalho says he's only able to have a rare second child thanks to his secure job as a Lisbon bus driver.
CARVALHO: I have a lot of friends going to England, to France because they don't have jobs in Portugal. It's difficult, very difficult.
FRAYER: More than 100,000 Portuguese of child-bearing age move abroad each year. That's one person emigrating every five minutes, in a country of just 10 million. Many of those who stay here put off having families indefinitely. They can't afford it.
I duck into the hospital's cafeteria where the head obstetrician has agreed to meet me.
DR. ANA CAMPOS: I've been a doctor since '81 - 32 years.
FRAYER: Dr. Ana Campos recalls when she first started delivering babies here.
CAMPOS: The rooms were filled and we had more than 40 deliveries in one day. And now we have 10 deliveries in one day.
FRAYER: Now, two whole wings of this hospital are unused, lights off. And Portugal is limiting the number of students allowed to study obstetrics. The country doesn't need them anymore. Birthrates have been falling across southern Europe for decades, as women in traditionally Catholic countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy get access to birth control, higher education and enter the job market. But Portugal has seen the biggest, fastest drop in births, 14 percent in just four years. Now there are less than 1.3 births per woman, compared to more than two in the US.
ARLINDO OLIVEIRA: In fact we have hit an all-time low, since we have records of birthrate.
FRAYER: Arlindo Oliveira, the head of one of Lisbon's universities, says if you combine that with the hordes of young Portuguese leaving the country...
OLIVEIRA: What we are looking at is a decrease in the total population and in particular, in the working-age population, because the population is also aging. The weight of the older generations on the working-age population will be very, very high.
FRAYER: Fewer future workers and taxpayers are being born to pay for the rest of the population's retirement. Portugal's already bankrupt. It got a bailout from Europe two years ago and may need another one. Luisa Condeco is a doula birthing coach who delivers babies in rural Alentejo province, where the birthrate is less than half of what it was 30 years ago. On Skype, she describes the rural area where she lives and works.
LUISA CONDECO: There's only two or three children in a small village, and there's like 10 or 15 old people more than there used to be. So, they're closing some schools and preschools, and transforming them into nursing homes for older people.
FRAYER: And when a baby is born the whole village celebrates. Birth announcements are on the front page. Town halls deliver gift baskets. And the grandmothers...
CONDECO: Especially the grandmothers, they're always complaining, oh, this is the only one. So, they go and buy everything they can. I have seen that happening so many times. They go and they want to do everything they can because it's going to be the only grandson or granddaughter they have.
FRAYER: Back in Lisbon, the country's biggest maternity hospital was actually slated to close last summer, but employees went to court to fight for their jobs. They won a reprieve, and the hospital remains open for now - for the jobs, if not for new babies. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer.
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