The line graph illustrates how many children women had on average in the UKand Kazakhstan from 1920 to 2019, while the table provides a woman’s average age of first-time motherhood for the same countries and time period. Over time, a general trend of deferring childbearing to a later age and having fewer children overall can be observed in both countries, although women in Kazakhstan had their first child earlier and had more children than their UK counterparts.
In 1920, the average British woman gave birth to approximately two children, while the Kazakhstani average was around 3.5. In both countries, the birth rate continued to increase until the 1960s, at which point it peaked at around 2.7 and 4.5 children per woman respectively. Between 1960 and 2019, the numbers generally declined, with the end of the period displaying a rate of approximately 1.8 children per woman in the UK and 3.0 in Kazakhstan.
In terms of women’s age at first childbirth, females in Kazakhstan preceded those in Britain by about one to four years across all time periods. The average age of giving birth to the first child increased slightly in both countries, from 26.5 in the UK and 23.5 in Kazakhstan in 1920 to 28.9 and 27.6 in 2019 respectively.