Only a few months after government figures revealed that the number of births in Italy in 2022, for the third consecutive year, dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, the number of births registered across Germany last year sank to its lowest level in a decade.
In a press release published last week, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office revealed that a total of 738,819 babies were born in 2022, dropping 8% from 2021 to 1.46 children per woman, the lowest rate registered since 2013 when the average was 1.42 children per woman, Die Welt reports.
The sharp decline in births comes after Germany, in 2021, saw its highest birth rate since 1997, registering a total of 795,492 births, which amounts to a rate of 1.58 children per woman.
The birthrate of 1.46 children per woman, as the statistical researchers note, is well below the 2.1 children that would have to be born per woman in order for a population to replace itself.
“In order for the population of a country not to shrink—without immigration—in purely mathematical terms about 2.1 children would have to be born per woman in highly developed countries,” the statisticians wrote in their report.
Researchers noted that birth rates declined across all 16 of Germany’s federal states, emphasizing that numbers “fell particularly sharply in Hamburg and Berlin, at 10% each. Declines in birthrates were the least pronounced in Bremen, at 4%.
Meanwhile, women in the states of Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate registered the highest birth rates at 1.52 children, still well below replacement levels. Conversely, and as has been the case since 2017, Berlin recorded the lowest birth rate, at 1.25 children per woman.
The average age of first-time mothers last year was 30.4 years, down from 30.5 years the year before, while the average age of fathers when their first child was born remained unchanged at 33.3 years.
Despite its birth rate sinking to a ten-year low, the population of Germany nevertheless climbed to 84.3 million people in 2022—more people than have ever lived in the country before—as net migration amounted to a record-setting 1.5 million people. A total of 2.7 million newcomers arrived in Germany last year, according to figures from the Federal Statistical Office.
“The figures, therefore, show the highest net immigration recorded to date within a reporting year since the start of the time series in 1950,” the Federal Statistical Office said.
Birth rates fell at similar percentages across other northern European countries last year as well, with Denmark’s dropping 10% while Norway and Sweden decreased by 9%.
