Every seventh person will be 80 or more years old in 2060
WIESBADEN – At present, Germany has a population of about 82 million, which will decline to not more than 65 to 70 million by 2060. In addition, the age structure of the population will change considerably. Today, 20% of the population are aged 65 and over. As early as in the next two decades, however, the proportion of older people will clearly rise. As the President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), Roderich Egeler, stated at a press conference to present the results of the 12th co-ordinated population projection, every third person would be at least 65 years and every seventh person even 80 or more years old in 2060. The above results were obtained by two population projection variants which are based, on the one hand, on the same assumption that the present demographic trends will continue, and on the other, on different assumptions regarding the extent of immigration. The population will decline because the number of births will continuously decrease by 2060 and the number of deaths will increase until the beginning of the 2050s. The annual deficit of births, that is the excess of deaths over births, will more than triple by 2060 (2008: 162,000, 2060: 527,000 or 553,000, depending on the variant). This trend will be substantially based on the current age structure of the population. The decline in the population can be stopped neither by net immigration from other countries nor by a slightly higher number of births per woman. Today, the population of working age from 20 to 64 years consists of some 50 million persons. In 2060, their number will be down by 27% or 34%, depending on the assumed extent of immigration. However, the number of persons aged 65 and over will increase drastically after 2020 when the strong age cohorts will reach that age. Hence the ‘old-age ratio’, that is the number of persons of retirement age per 100 persons of working age, will also increase considerably. Today 34 persons aged 65 and over are faced by 100 persons aged between 20 and 64 years. In 2030, their number will amount to more than 50 and in 2060 to 63 or 67, depending on the projection variant. As regards the retirement age of 67, the old-age ratio will be 43 or 44 (depending on the variant) in 2030 and 56 or 59 in 2060, while it is 29 today. The above results refer to the two variants of population projection, which mark the upper and lower thresholds of a margin within which the population size and age structure will develop provided the current demographic trends persist. The two variants are based on the following assumptions: The total fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman will remain nearly constant. Life expectancy at birth will increase by about eight years to 85.0 years for boys and by about seven years to 89.2 years for girls by 2060. With respect to the annual net migration (difference between in-migration from other countries and out-migration to other countries), one of the variants assumes that it will increase to 100,000 persons in 2014 and then remain constant. The second variant is based on the assumption that it will climb to 200,000 by 2020 and then remain at the same level. On the whole, the 12th co-ordinated population projection comprises 12 variants. Long-term population projections are no forecasts. They rather have a model character and show how the population and its structure would change based on certain assumptions. For more detailed information on the assumptions and results regarding the variants of the 12th co-ordinated population projection please refer to the documents of today’s press conference (“Population trends in Germany by 2060”) which can be downloaded in PDF format. Detailed results for all variants and additional model calculations can be obtained from the Publications Bevölkerung 2060(only in German). At Bevoelkerungspyramide (only in German) an animated population pyramid can be accessed for several of the variants. For further information please call: Reinhold Zahn, tel: +49 611 75 2242, demografie@destatis.de
