Manila – According to the National Statistics Office (NSO) Philippines now averages 4,782 births daily or 199 births per hour.
It said the number of registered live births decreased by 2.2%, from 1,784,316 in 2008 to 1,745,585 in 2009.
An average of three babies are born in the Philippines every minute, and 4 out of every 10 babies are illegitimate. A total of 711,079 or 40.7% of the total births recorded from January 2009 to March 2010 were illegitimate, according to NSO data.
The NSO also revealed that 195,662 or 11.2% of live births were born to teen mothers
Around three-fourths or 74.0% of the total births in the country were medically attended either by a physician, a nurse or a midwife.
The top three regions with the highest number of live births were in Luzon area. These are:
Region 4A – CALABARZON with 266,688 live births
National Capital Region with 265,774
Region III – Central Luzon with 204,148.
The Philippines is closely inching to a 100 million population, making it the world’s 12th most populous country but with a human development index ranking of 97th among 169 countries.
