Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, explains why Germany's demographic challenges are unique in the world.
 | Reiner Klingholz, Director, Berlin Institute for Population and Development"Eastern Germany is the demographic crisis area in Europe. There's no other region - including in Romania and Bulgaria - which is affected to such an extent." (Photo: Berlin Institute) |
You have said that because of the Nazi past, it was taboo in postwar Germany for the government to address population issues. What were the consequences of this?
We lost a whole generation - over thirty years - of knowledge and experience in this field. We had a drop in birthrate from 2.5 children per woman at the peak of the "baby boom" in the 1960s to 1.4 in 1975. As a consequence, the number of newborns today in comparison to the 1960s has halved. We had nearly 1.4 million newborns per year and now we have about 700,000.
Imagine if France saw their number of newborns halved. It would have caused a national outcry from all parties. Everybody would say, "what's going on here?" But this question wasn't posed in Germany. Anybody in Scandinavia or most other countries would have tried to analyze the situation and counter-react. It's mainly only the German-speaking countries that reacted slowly. Austria is the same, really; Switzerland is comparable. They all had the same kind of family policy for many decades.
The consequence of not talking about this issue and not reacting is still felt in politics. The public discussion about these things only started in 2002 and 2003. Only ten years ago, these issues would have been pushed into the far right-wing corner. What we do today - our analysis and recommendations - would have been seen as a "fascist" discussion ten to twenty years ago, which is kind of absurd.
 | Germany's Falling Birth Rate (click on graphic to enlarge)Annual births and deaths in Germany, from the formation of the modern state in 1871 to the present day (Graphic: Allianz) |
What are the unique demographic challenges that Germany is facing?
We were the first country worldwide that had such a sharp drop in fertility very early. Today, there are fertility rates - like in South Korea, Belarus, and Poland - that are below ours, but we already had this low number of children back in the 1970s. Those children are now in the potential parent age. So, today we are in a situation were a reduced number of parents has a reduced number of children.
For that reason, we have the lowest number of newborns per one thousand inhabitants in the world. This number is important for the social security systems, because it describes the size of the coming generation compared to the overall population. Those young people born today are responsible for the productivity, income, taxes, and social system of the future. Our system is - at least looking at the numbers - probably in the worst situation.
What else makes Germany unique?
That we are still a divided country. Because of the emigration of 1.7 million people - mainly young, qualified, and female - from eastern Germany since the fall of the Iron Curtain, which is more than 10 percent of the former population, as well as the enormous drop in the birthrate. This generation is halved, and if you add the emigration of young families, it is even more than half. This generation born in the 1990s will be in the parent age from 2015 on. We will have halved number of newborns again from 2015 on. Of course, this has an enormous effect on schools, infrastructure, and so on.
Between 2015 and 2020, you will have a number of demographic effects in eastern Germany which will put an enormous stress on the system: 50 percent of potential parents, 50 percent of students, 50 percent of job starters. At the same time, you have the baby boomers being pushed into the pension age. That means less people in the workforce, less buying power, and less taxes for the communities. Plus the end of the Solidarity Pact, which runs out in 2019, will mean less transfer money for eastern Germany.
We are working on a study on the economic future of Europe where we compare 285 regions. There we find that eastern Germany is the demographic crisis area in Europe. There's no other region - including in Romania and Bulgaria - which is affected to such an extent.
Is there anything that can be done?
Even if we have a perfect family policy, it won't really have a short-term effect, because it takes generations before you really can stop a downward trend. You can probably reduce the downward trend, but it's still a severe downward trend. The only thing that can be done in eastern Germany - and that goes for Germany as a whole, as well as Italy, Greece, Spain, and eastern Europe - is to adapt as cleverly as possible to the new situation, because we can't reinvent people who have not been born over the last three decades.
Isn't immigration a possible solution?
Immigration is one alternative, but you still cannot fill the gaps that began thirty years ago. Why do immigrants come? Because there are jobs. The economic situation in eastern Germany does not cry that much for immigration. The second thing is that the experience with immigration is not that high, so you don't have that many foreigners. Foreigners like to come to places where you already have clusters of Turks, Indians, Pakistanis, and so on. If you don't have the clusters, there's no real attraction for others.
The third thing is that the openness for foreigners is not very expressed in eastern Germany, so this tolerance is not around. It doesn't make it very attractive for clever Indians to come if they read in the papers that Indian people are beaten up. All this is pretty tough, I would say.
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: July 21, 2008
