Almost 80,000 fewer children were born in Germany in 2022 and 2023 than demographers would have predicted. The estimate comes from Joachim Ragnitz, deputy director of the Ifo Institute’s Dresden branch, and it anchors a report the Ifo Institute for Economic Research released on Wednesday.
The headline numbers are stark enough. Germany recorded 693,000 births in 2023, almost 13% fewer than the 795,500 in 2021. The fertility rate, meaning the average number of children a woman has over her lifetime, slid from 1.58 in 2021 to 1.35. Ifo’s researchers found the fall steeper in the eastern states, where births dropped 17.5%.
Ragnitz, who has studied demographic change in the east, said childbearing behavior had “changed massively” over three years. His explanation was a blend of shocks. “The coronavirus crisis, the outbreak of war in Ukraine and also the loss of income due to high inflation have obviously prompted many young families to put off having children for the time being,” he told DW.
He was careful to add that these reasons are conjecture and cannot be proved statistically. The researchers also said they could not tell whether the shift reflects permanent or temporary changes in family planning.
Why the east fell further
Fewer women of childbearing age live in Germany than before, which accounts for part of the drop in births. It does not account for all of it, since the rate per woman has fallen too. In the east, the pattern fits a documented trend: more young women than young men leave for the west, for work or private reasons.
A reversal of the last decade
The slump follows a rise. Between 2011 and 2016 the fertility rate climbed from 1.39 to 1.59, helped by better conditions for families and by immigrant families with higher fertility rates. From 2016 to 2021 the country recorded more than nine births per 1,000 inhabitants. That figure is now 8.2.
The decline has not stopped. The Federal Statistical Office counted around 392,000 births from January to July 2024, 3% fewer than in the same months of 2023.
What politicians can do
Ragnitz pointed to the cost of a child, which he put at around €180,000 ($194,000) over the first 18 years, as a hard fact in any family’s calculation. Changing that arithmetic, in his view, falls to politicians, through higher benefits or lower costs. Calculations cited in the DW report suggest such benefits could cost taxpayers up to €200 billion a year, according to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs.
He also had a warning on planning. “Politicians would be well advised to monitor these developments more closely, also in order to avoid possible wrong decisions when expanding daycare and schooling,” he said.
Nothing quick should be expected, he added. Whether the state changes the incentives or society shifts its attitude, “either approach can only play a role in the long term, not in the short term.”
Sources
- German birth rate drops rapidly, new report says
- Germany's birth rate drops to 10-year record-low – ELFAC
