In FOCUS / 2017-07-26
Number of newborns approaches the level reached at turn of the millennium
More children are born in Germany. From 2011 to 2015, the number of newborns rose by about 75,000 to roughly 738,000. That was the highest figure since the turn of the millennium (767,000 live-born children).
The increase in births is mainly due to three developments. First, the number of potential mothers aged between 25 and 39 years rose by 344,000 between 2011 and 2015. A factor that contributed to this development, in addition to immigration, is a relatively favourable age structure. The women born in the late 1970s and the 1980s are children of the baby boomers, which means that they, too, belong to baby-boom cohorts.
Second, the fertility of the women born in the late 1970s and early 1980s has increased. A typical characteristic of these women is that they start a family very late in life. An especially large number of them give birth to children now as the current framework conditions are favourable. The third factor is that the composition of female immigrants has changed. As regards foreign mothers, a marked increase in births was observed especially among Romanians, Bulgarians and Syrians. It is not clear yet to what extent these developments will continue.
More information on this issue is contained in the documents on the press conference on childlessness, births and families (only in German).
