143 girls aged 14 and under had babies last year

More than 140 girls aged 14 and under had babies last year, alongside thousands of older teenagers and 94 women aged 50 and over.

New data released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) shows the spread of age groups among women giving birth in English hospitals in 2014/15.

It shows there were 143 births to girls aged 14 and under and 23,262 to those aged 15 to 19.

Among those aged 50 and over, there were 94 births and 1,298 births to women aged 45 to 49.

Most births were to women in the 30 to 34 age group, with 194,086 deliveries.

Among women aged 35-39, there were 102,711 deliveries.

Overall, women in their 30s accounted for 47% of all deliveries and this is the only age group with increasing numbers of births.

Among those aged 25 to 29, there were 178,952 deliveries and 102,341 to women aged 20 to 24.

Some 26.5% of all deliveries in NHS hospitals were by Caesarean section (up 0.3% in a year), rising to 36% among women aged 35 and over.

Just 18% of women aged under 25 needed a Caesarean delivery.

Most Caesareans across all age groups were to mothers in Essex (28.8%) and London (28.7%).

London also had the highest rate of all deliveries to mothers in their 40s.

Overall, the number of deliveries across England has fallen and is now the lowest recorded since 2006/07.

There were 636,600 deliveries, a 1.6% drop since 2013/14 when there were 646,900.

The largest decrease in deliveries from 2013/14 was among mothers aged under 20 - down 11.5% to 23,400

Other data published by HSCIC shows there were 15.9 million admissions to NHS hospitals in England in 2014/15 - the equivalent of 43,500 per day.

This is 1,200 more per day on average than in 2013/14 and 10,400 more per day on average than 10 years ago in 2004/05.

The greatest number of admissions by age was for patients aged 65 to 69 (1.3 million).

The greatest increase in the number of admissions was for patients aged 70 to 74, up 5.9% since 2013/14 to 1.2 million in 2014/15.

In 2013/14, there were 107 births to mothers aged 50 and over and 133 to girls aged 14 and under.