International Day of Families in 2023 focuses on the megatrend of demographic change and its impact on families.
In the Basque Country, in 2016 (reference year of the most recent data of the Demografic Poll) there were 58,100 families in which the reference person was under 35 years of age; those were 6.5% of all families in the Basque Country. This shows the low number of families made up of young people in our autonomous community.
Furthermore, comparing this figure with that recorded in 2001 (from the 2001 Population and Housing Census), we see that the volume of young families, i.e. whose reference person is under 35 years of age, has fallen significantly in just a few years: in 2001 there were 104,916 young families (14.0 % of all families) and in 2016 there were 58,100.
According to the 2016 data, 41.3 % of young families were single-person families, 26.0 % were nuclear families without children, i.e. formed by a couple without children, and another 6.0 % were compound families, i.e. formed by two or more people who could be related or not, but were not in any case a couple. Adding these three categories together, we see that 73.3% of young families had no children.
On the other hand, 19.3 % of young families were nuclear families with children, i.e. composed of a couple with children. In families whose reference person was aged 35-64, this nuclear family model with children was the most common type of family (49.2 % were of this type).
In addition, another 5.2 % of the young families were single-parent families, i.e. a mother or father with children. Another 1.9 % were extended families, which is a nuclear family of any type (with or without children) with one or more related persons living together. The remaining 0.3 % were polynuclear families, consisting of several nuclei.
