Professor Monden explained that, “The twinning rate in Africa is so high because of the high number of dizygotic twins – twins born from two separate eggs – born there." He continued, “This is most likely to be due to genetic differences between the African population and other populations.”
Benin and the cluster of countries nearby is an area that has been spotlighted many times before for what appear to be staggeringly high rates of twins. Just east of Benin, the westernmost regions of Nigeria have some of the highest twin rates in the world.
In Australia, twins happen in 1 in every 80 births. This means that 1 in 40 Australians is a twin. The birth rate of identical twins is the same around the world and doesn't vary with the mother's age.
Vietnam was the country with the fewest twins (6.2 per 1,000 births) and Benin was the country with the most (27.9 per 1,000). Over time, some of these developing countries saw increases in twins, but some saw decreases and some stayed the same, with any changes tending to be small.
In Nigeria's southwestern city of Igbo-Ora, there is an unusually abundant number of twins - so much so that it is the west African nation's self-proclaimed "twin capital". "Nearly every family here has twins or other multiple births," says local chief Jimoh Titiloye.
Having twins is widely considered a joyous, miraculous event in China. Celebrities' twin pregnancies often make headlines, and many popular TV dramas and movies feature twin characters. Twins are even more enviable due to decades of strict family planning restrictions via the one-child policy.
Australians Anna and Lucy DeCinque call themselves the “most identical twins in the world”, and work to live up to their self-proclaimed title. They're engaged to the same man, have the same bathroom schedule, and work the same job – one for a salary the other as a volunteer, for legal reasons.
In 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (latest report as of October 2021) there were 4,248 multiple births representing 1.5% of all births (309,996) in Australia. This comprised 4,185 pairs of twins and 63 sets of triplets and higher order multiples.
Twins are more or less equally likely to be female or male. Contrary to popular belief, the incidence of twins doesn't skip generations.
Around the world, the chances of having twins for a couple is 1 per cent, and the rate for China is 0.5 per cent, according to Yu Rong, an obstetrician from Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing.
In the table below, countries are ranked from the highest to lowest average births per woman in 2020. The African country of Niger currently has the highest fertility rate, at 6.9, which means on average, a woman in Niger will have seven children in her lifetime.
The rate keeps rising for (naturally) two big reasons. More twins are being born now than ever before. Parents are increasingly using in-vitro fertilization and deciding to have children later in life. The twin rate could continue to go up as more nations push these factors higher.
It is estimated that 1 in 250 natural pregnancies will naturally result in twins. While twin pregnancies can happen by chance, there are some factors that may increase your odds of having two babies at the same time.
After natural conception, just over one per cent of pregnancies are twins (NCCWCH 2013, NHS 2014). For babies born as a result of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), where two embryos are put back in the mum's womb (uterus), 24 per cent of births result in twins or triplets .
The most common birthday in Australia is September 17th! The least common birthday (you may have guessed it is) is Christmas Day, the 25th of December. If you are inclined to count leap years in the mix then the 29th February is the least common birthday, but only because they occur once every 4 years.
By 2020, one-half of first-time mothers (53%) was aged 30 years or over. The proportion of first-time mothers who were aged 35 years and older increased markedly in this time. Before 1991, it was uncommon for women to start childbearing at age 35 years or older (up to 5%).
A set of nonuplets was born on 13 June 1971, in Sydney, Australia to Geraldine Brodrick and her husband Leonard. They were five boys and four girls; two of the boys were stillborn and the last of the surviving babies, a boy named Richard, died six days after the birth.
About one-third of twins are identical or monozygotic twins (when one fertilised egg divides in half). Two-thirds are non-identical or dizygotic twins (when two eggs are fertilised by different sperm). The chance of any woman having identical twins is one in 300.
Happy birthday to Concie Marshall and her twin sister, Leila Moag, from Berry in NSW who turn 101 today! Concie's daughter, Rhonda, shares how the twins are celebrating their special day: "The staff at their nursing home are giving them a birthday morning tea with other residents.
Anna and Lucy DeCinque call themselves the "most identical twins in the world," and work to live up to their self-proclaimed title. They're engaged to the same man, have the same bathroom schedule, and work the same job (one for a salary the other as a volunteer, for legal reasons, they told me).
Administration. The organizational structure of the two-child policy was housed under different governmental units since its conception in the 1960s.
Families in China can now have as many children as they like without facing fines or other consequences, the Chinese government said late Tuesday. The move followed China's announcement on May 31 that families could now have three children each.
What happened if a mother had twins? The one-child policy was generally accepted to mean one birth per family, meaning if women gave birth to two or more children at the same time, they would not be penalised.