Baby boom times for Germany

[Youenn]

Baby boom times for Germany

By Bertrand Benoit in Düsseldorf
Published: July 14 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 14 2007 03:00

A pregnant woman is a rare sight on German city streets. But sit at a café terrace on Düsseldorf's Königsallee, its main shopping artery, and you will probably spot several swollen bellies.

Statisticians have been scratching their heads lately over figures that suggest Germans, among the most barren of western Europeans, are rediscovering the joys of procreation.

In the first quarter of 2007, nearly 15 per cent more babies were born in Düsseldorf than in the same period last year. The Kaiserwerther Diakonie, one of the city's three large hospitals, reported a rise in births of more than 16 per cent in the first half of the year.

Die Welt, the daily, is predicting "a new baby boom".

The excitement is understandable. Germany not only pioneered Europe's downward turn in fertility rates 30 years ago. It also has one of the continent's lowest birth rates at 1.34 children per woman, and its population is shrinking.

Germany's demographics have spawned doomsday predictions about the collapse of the country's welfare state and medical system. Opinion polls show few young people think they can survive in old age on the basic state pension.

"German-speaking countries are unique in having a full generation that has come of age seeing childbearing as abnormal," says Wolfgang Lutz, the director of the Vienna Institute of Demography. "This has affected the psychology, with a third of young men now saying they never want to have children."

Demography experts warn that it could take months, even years, to determine whether the rise in childbirth is a statistical anomaly or if something more fundamental is happening. Yet this has not prevented them from speculating about the factors behind the surge.

One popular explanation lies in the country's powerful economic recovery. The link between income expectation and fertility has been generally accepted since the 1980s, when Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, first highlighted it.

"The people definitely feel better. There is more optimism," says Björn Lampe, superintendent of the Florence Nightingale gynae-cology and maternity clinic at the Kaiserwerther Dia-konie.

The prosperous city has long been a magnet for young families, even in more difficult times. Birth rates have steadily increased every year since 2000 and it is now benefiting over-proportionally from the rebound.

Another possible factor lies in policy. Manfred Golschinski, the head of Düsseldorf's statistical office, points to the municipality's family-friendly measures: Düsseldorf has had a budget surplus for the past seven years and has invested heavily in renovating schools and building kindergartens.

Then there is Elterngeld, a new parental allowance. Introduced nationwide in January and modelled on Scandinavian policies, the benefit entitles every new parent to a state allowance worth 67 per cent of their salary if they stop working for a year after having a child.

"The experience of Scandinavian countries, which introduced such benefits in the 1970s, clearly had a positive impact," says Gerda Neyer, head of the laboratory on population and policies at the Max Planck Institute for Demography inRostock.

Drawing lessons from Scandinavia, a region with some of the highest fertility rates in Europe, was good practice, says Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.

But more crucial was the radical change it represented in the way Germans and their political leaders perceive the economic role of women, he says.

German women's participation in the labour force, though higher than the European average, falls precipitously after they become mothers. This is partly explained by the country's lack of childcare facilities, which makes it hard for women to reconcile work and family.

"But this is also a legacy of our highly politicised vision of women's role in society, which is itself a leftover from our fascist past," says Mr Klingholz. "We always had a polarisation between conservatives who think a woman's place is at home and leftwingers who look down on child-bearing."

Elterngeld, he says, was a decisive step "because it is about making it easier for a woman to combine work and family, which every demographically successful society tells us is the key to higher birth rates".

A senior civil servant involved in drafting thelaw says the shift took place about three years ago, when it dawned on much of the conservative electorate that keeping women at the stove was a recipe for gradual extinction.


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[Strengthandhonour]

They are discovering the gift of pro-creation thanks to the help of Turks.

[svin]

When I was in Italy I was quite impressed by so many people with little children. Much more than I see in Moscow. I wonder, what are the statistics for Italy?

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by svin

When I was in Italy I was quite impressed by so many people with little children. Much more than I see in Moscow. I wonder, what are the statistics for Italy?

Italy has a low birthrate.

[svin]

Then we have even lower.

According to wiki (Italy):

Birth rate: 9.72 births/1,000 population (Istat 2005)

Death rate: 9.4 deaths/1,000 population (Istat 2005)

[Cirrus]

In 2007 the birth rate is even lower (and death rate higher) for Italy :

Birth rate: 8.54 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate: 10.5 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

Strangely, the birth rate is higher in Russia (but the death rate as well) :

Birth rate: 10.92 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate: 16.04 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...orld-factbook/

[kimm]

I wonder how many of these new baby boomers are immigrants rather than ethnic Germans?

[Menydh]

Yes, I'm sure that Yusuf must be very pleased..

[Strengthandhonour]

Italy's birth rate is a disaster.
A lot of Italian people want to live like kings so I guess if it narrows down to kids or wealth they will go ahead and pick the wealth. Also, some parts of Italy can be very expensive to live in.

[Menydh]

I thought about going to the maternity building of the central hospital here, to take some shots (erh.. pictures.. for now).

[Ikutiera]

Baby Boom in Berlin - TIME

Geburtenrate: Frauen in Deutschland bekommen mehr Kinder - Politik - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten

[Tennyson]

It happened in DDR. The fertility rate rose a 33% from the 1970s to the mid-80s. This was related to the implementation of family salaries.

See Vining's article:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=009...3E2.0.CO%3B2-A

[Tennyson]

Originally Posted by kimm

I wonder how many of these new baby boomers are immigrants rather than ethnic Germans?

I read an article about a small largely Catholic town which had a very high birth rate compared to the rest of Germany, though.

[Kernunnos]

What if birthrates were deliberately falsified to justify immigration?

After all immigrants are a good source of cheap labor, and it would be difficult to accept immigration if birthrates were just as decent as they possibly are.

I have thought this also because I live close to german tourists, and many families have two or three young childrens.

[Marcus Marulus]

I don't think it's falsified. The demographic disaster has been around for several decades and it wouldn't be so easy to falsify it on such a grand scale.

However, immigration is not solution. It multiplies problems instead of solving them and destroys the tissue of the nation.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Plethon

I don't think it's falsified. The demographic disaster has been around for several decades and it wouldn't be so easy to falsify it on such a grand scale.

However, immigration is not solution. It multiplies problems instead of solving them and destroys the tissue of the nation.

Surely i'm not suspecting a grand deception, simply I wonder if data are not deliberately pushed towards a less optimistic view, hiding improvements and a possible inversion of tendency.

Let's not forget that immigrants are a source of political power for the left and a lot of charitable association, especially the powerful catholic ones in catholic countries, get considerable wealth by the funds they receive from governments to treat immigrants needs.

There is an army of consultants, expert, sociologists, psychologists and social workers whose only source of income are immigrants.