Data released by the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, reveal that Portugal's birth rate last year was 0.85%, the fourth lowest in the EU and was only higher than Italy (0.73%), Spain (0.79%) and Greece (0.81%).

The birth rate in 2017 was 0.84% in Portugal.

With regard to the mortality rate, last year Portugal was in the middle of the table of 28 EU countries, with 1.1%, higher than that recorded in 2017 (1.07%)

On January 1st of this year, the country had a population of around 10.28 million people, less than the 10.29 million recorded in the same period last year.

In absolute terms, 87,000 births and 113,000 deaths were recorded in Portugal last year.

At the beginning of this year, the Portuguese population represented 2% of all EU residents.

In all, the EU population was almost 513.5 million people at the beginning of this year, more than the 512.4 million people registered in January 2018, an increase that takes into account, mainly, the phenomenon of migration.