As births slow in Europe and US, ex-laggard Germany bucks trend

BERLIN • China and the United States are grappling with falling birth rates but Germany has bucked the trend with a rise in births nine months after its first pandemic lockdown, testimony to recent family-friendly policies and higher migration.

Europe's largest economy used to have one of the lowest fertility rates in the region as conservative social norms and policies made it hard for women to reconcile families and work, crimping economic growth and compounding Germany's labour shortage as baby boomers retire.

That started to change as Chancellor Angela Merkel expanded parental benefits and state investment in childcare from 2005. Her 2015 decision to let in over a million mostly young refugees gave a further boost.

"It was mainly driven by family policies like childcare to help to reconcile work and family, particularly for highly educated women," said Dr Martin Bujard, deputy director at Germany's Federal Institute for Population Research, adding that the influx of migrants and strong economic growth before the pandemic had also helped.

Germany's fertility rate of 1.54 children per woman is still below the US figure of 1.64 and short of the so-called replacement rate of around 2.1 seen as necessary to sustain rich-country population levels.

But it is well above the 1.3 rate recorded in China last year - the level Germany was at in 2006 - and is now broadly in line with the European Union average, according to Eurostat.

Whereas the United States is almost alone among wealthy nations in not providing paid maternity leave at a national level, the German state covers 14 months of paid parental leave, with two months reserved for fathers.

In China, women are entitled to 98 days of maternity leave, including 15 days of prenatal leave. But many couples say high living costs and the difficulty of combining parenthood and careers have deterred them from starting families.

While other European countries have seen their birth rates fall during the Covid-19 crisis, Germany's positive trend looks set to continue.

In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment jumped 9.3 per cent last year overall, even though the first lockdown closed many clinics. While experts estimate that IVF babies account for only about 3 per cent to 4 per cent of births nationally, that figure at least suggests many Germans have not been put off parenting.

The rise might be due to people having more time and money for fertility treatment after working from home and saving cash during lockdowns, the DIR organisation for IVF medicine said.

14 Number of months of paid parental leave in Germany.

98 Number of days of paid maternity leave in China.

0 Number of days of paid maternity leave in the US.

Germany's promptness in assuring people they would be paid by the state if they could not work while businesses were shut also helped encourage would-be parents, as did the relatively low number of deaths in the first wave of the pandemic.

The birth rate has fluctuated with Germany's turbulent history and is still not enough to avert the likelihood that its working-age population, whose pension contributions support the growing number of retirees, will shrink in coming years.

After the Nazis awarded women with big families a "mother's cross", policies explicitly designed to raise the birth rate were long taboo. Germany then saw its birth rate collapse after unification in 1990 as women in the formerly communist East put off pregnancy due to economic insecurity.

The arrival of more than a million refugees since 2015 has helped, but that effect has been diminishing as the birth rate among immigrant women declines, falling to 2.1 children in 2019 from 2.3 in 2016.

Parent-friendly policies are set to stay in place, whoever wins September's federal election. Although some climate campaigners worry about the environmental impact of having children, the Greens, who top most polls, have pledged to invest in childcare and foster women's economic equality.

REUTERS