The data, released jointly with the Portuguese Committee for UNICEF, indicate that between 1990 and 2023, the proportion of children (up to 17 years old) in the total population decreased from 25.2% to 15.7%.

In the same period, the number of live births per thousand women of childbearing age decreased from 46.5 to 38.8 and the average age of women at the birth of their first child increased from 24.9 to 30.2 years, according to the same source.

The poverty risk rate for children up to 17 years of age remained higher than that observed for the general population, reaching 17.8% in 2023.

The risk of poverty affected almost a third of the population living in single-parent households and around 28% in the case of large families.

Last year, 3.6% of children did not have access to the dental consultations or treatments they needed and 4.5% had some limitation in carrying out activities considered normal for their age, due to long-term health problems.

In 2024, a fifth of children lived in families unable to pay for at least one week of vacation per year, away from home, and a tenth of children were unable to regularly participate in an extracurricular or leisure activity.