The Economist - UK (2019-06-29)

32 Europe The EconomistJune 29th 2019

I

n 1907 ananxious Austrian, Emil Reich,

predicted that Germany would have a

population of 150m in 1980 and as many as

200m by the year 2000. It seemed plausible

at the time. Germany had a high birth rate

and a falling mortality rate. Reich’s predic-

tion, in his book “Germany’s Swelled

Head”, turned out to be completely wrong.

By the early 1980s East and West Germany

had a combined fertility rate lower than

anywhere in the world except Denmark

and the Channel Islands. Far from explod-

ing, Germany’s population seemed

doomed to rapid decline.

But in the past few years something un-

expected has happened. The fertility rate,

an estimate of the number of children each

woman can expect to have in her lifetime,

has climbed off the floor. Between 2006

and 2017 it rose from 1.33 to 1.57. The rate for

2018 has not yet been worked out, but more

babies were born that year than in 2017.

Germany’s fertility rate has pulled away

from Italy’s and Spain’s (see chart) and is

now almost identical to the euro-area aver-

age. On June 17th the unestimated that in

2050 Germany will have 58 people over the

age of 65 for every 100 people aged 20-64.

That is a lot, but comfortably less than Ita-

ly’s predicted ratio of 74 to 100.

What has happened? It is partly a statis-

tical quirk. The fertility rate is influenced

by the timing of childbirth. If women move

en masse to have children at older ages, the

rate will fall, then rise again as the average

age of childbearing stabilises. This has

happened in Germany and other rich coun-

tries. But it does not explain the whole rise

in the fertility rate. German women born in

1973 (who can be assumed to be done with

babies by now) have more children than

women born in 1968.

Another explanation is immigration.

Germany has not only accepted a lot of peo-

ple in the past decade—it has taken them

from countries where large families are the

norm. In 2017 Syrian women in Germany

had 20,100 babies, up from just 2,300 three

years earlier. Afghans and Iraqis had more

than 5,000 each. Tomas Sobotka, a re-

searcher at the Vienna Institute of Demog-

raphy, estimates that about half the rise of

Germany’s fertility rate in the past few

years is explained by immigration.

That boost will not last, because immi-

grants adjust quickly to native ways. Mona

Shinar, a Palestinian woman in her

mid-30s who fled Damascus for Potsdam,

near Berlin, comes from an enormous fam-

ily. Before Syria’s civil war began, she had 12

brothers and sisters. She already has four

children, including one who was born just

two days after she arrived in Germany. She

believes her children will have no more

than one or two babies each. She has “an Ar-

abic head”, as she puts it. Her children have

German heads.

The other explanation for the baby

boomlet is that Germany has made it easier

to raise children. What crushes birth rates,

whether in Europe or East Asia, is opening

higher education and attractive jobs to

women while continuing to expect moth-

ers to do the great majority of child care and

housework. If a society forces women to

choose between jobs and motherhood,

many will keep working. Western Germany

has a tradition of stigmatising working

mothers, and a special slur for them: Ra-

benmutter(“raven mother”).

This is gradually changing. In 2007 Ger-

many’s federal government introduced

generous parental-leave laws and tweaked

the rules to encourage fathers to take time

off. In 2013 it declared that children over

one year old had a right to nursery places.

Although there are still not enough places

to meet demand, supply is growing. Be-

tween 2006 and 2017 the number of chil-

dren under three enrolled in nurseries rose

from 286,000 to 762,000.

Unlike those in France, Scandinavia and

eastern Europe, German politicians sel-

dom talk explicitly about boosting the

birth rate—probably because the Nazis did.

Instead they talk about empowering wom-

en. Still, their policies seem to promote fe-

cundity. Lena Reibstein of the Berlin Insti-

tute for Population and Development says

they could do more if they changed the tax

system. At present married couples are al-

lowed to file joint income-tax returns. This

encourages mothers to stay at home by re-

ducing their husbands’ tax bills if they do.

Compare all that to the situation in Ita-

ly. It has immigrants too—but many come

from low-fertility countries like Romania

and Albania. Its economy has stagnated,

which puts people off having children. And

Italian politicians have no idea how to raise

the birth rate. Three years ago the govern-

ment ran an advertising campaign inform-

ing women that their biological clocks

were ticking, as though this had not oc-

curred to them. The campaign was with-

drawn amid heckling. Italy is now the

world’s second-oldest country, after Japan.

And the truth is, says Maria Letizia Tan-

turri, a demographer at the University of

Padova, that “people don’t care”.^7

POTSDAM

Why Germany’s birth rate is pulling away from Italy’s

Demography

A baby boomlet

Achtung baby

Sources:Eurostat;Istat *Birthsperwoman

Total fertility rate*

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6

2000 05 10 15 18

Germany

Italy

They’re coming back