Selective cost of delayed childbearing

Dear Sir, In recent years the tendency to postpone marriage and childbearing has spread throughout the developed countries, giving rise to a debate on its social and biological consequences (Bowman and Saunders, 1995; Gosden and Rutherford, 1995; Lansac, 1995; Breart, 1997). Here we wish to draw attention to the fact that in spite of the very low risk of perinatal mortality, since the beginning of the eighties when maternal age at delivery started to increase, women have paid a not negligible price in perinatal deaths. From 1980 to 1994, year of the latest available data from the Italian vital statistics bureau (ISTAT), in Northern and Central Italy the average maternal age at delivery and the proportion of aged (⩾35 years) mothers increased steadily, and linearly from 1985 onwards: the average age increased from 27 to 30 years, and the proportion of aged mothers by about 70%. During the same period the overall stillbirth rate decreased drastically, but among the aged mothers, in spite of a 60% reduction, it remained higher than that among mothers <35 years, and in 1994 had not yet reached the stillbirth rate suffered by the young mothers ten years earlier (Table I).