This is shown in the annual report “Families in Numbers” from the Austrian Institute for Family Research. The child care rate is at an all-time high – 29.9 percent of zero to three year olds are in institutional care. There is a gap between the employment of fathers and mothers – three quarters of mothers work part-time.
Couples tied the knot 47,482 times in 2022, compared to just 41,111 in 2021. The number fell in 2020 due to the pandemic and has been rising once more since then. In 2022, 342 weddings were between two men and 449 were between two women. 13,997 marriages ended in divorce in 2022, compared to 14,510 in the previous year. Over a longer period of time, the overall divorce rate falls: marriages concluded last year have a probability of divorce of 34.5 percent, those concluded in 2012 have a probability of 42.5 percent.
The last time there were so few births was in 2014
While marriage has apparently become more attractive, the picture is different when it comes to births. 82,627 children were born in 2022 and 86,078 in 2021. The overall fertility rate has also fallen: in 2022, a woman had an average of 1.41 children (2021: 1.48). On average, mothers were 30.3 years old when they gave birth to their first child – as in the previous year. When their first child was born, 50.7 percent of the parents were not married.
29.9 percent of zero to three year olds have an institutional childcare place, and another 2.2 percent are looked following by childminders. In the previous year it was 29.1 and 2.1 percent respectively. This continues to miss the EU-wide agreed “Barcelona target”, according to which a third of small children should attend childcare facilities by 2010. This target was increased once more in 2022, but reduced to 31.9 percent for Austria due to the comparatively low rate. According to the report, over 33 percent in institutional care will reach Vienna, Burgenland and Vorarlberg in 2022/23.
Gap in employment between mothers and fathers
Across Austria, 94.7 percent of three- to six-year-olds are in institutional care. “I am proud that we have achieved record levels in childcare and have been able to increase childcare rates for zero to three year olds and three to six year olds,” emphasized Family Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP) in a media release. She once once more referred to the sum of 4.5 billion euros that is to be invested in child care by 2030. This guarantees “that every family that needs a childcare place will get one.”
There is still a gap in the employment of mothers and fathers. 70.5 percent of women with children under 15 were employed in 2022, 75.3 percent of them part-time (2021: 67.8 and 75.0 percent, respectively). In comparison: 93.8 percent of men in the same category were employed, only 8.8 percent of them part-time. Only a little more than a third – 36 percent – of women with children under the age of three were even employed.
Of the 4,067,600 private households in Austria, 1,044,000 are couple households with children, 1,006,000 are couple households without children and 245,000 are single-parent households. There are also 1,546,000 single-person households. Of a total of 695,400 couples with children under the age of 15 living in the household, 62,900 were patchwork families in which at least one child from a previous relationship was brought into the household. More was paid out in childcare allowance in 2022, namely 1.238 billion euros (2021: 1.215 billion euros).
In 2022, 15.0 percent of households were at risk of poverty. Single-parent households with children under 18 are particularly often affected by poverty (36.8 percent).
