What if German fertility was as high as elsewhere in northwestern Europe?

(This is adapted from a blog post of mine, "Some thoughts on the origins of low fertility in Germany in reactions to totalitarianism".)

In Europe, northern and western European countries have relatively high levels of completed fertility, higher than those of southern and eastern European countries. This is a generalization, and this generalization like all others is accurate until it is contradicted. The contradiction in this case comes clearly--and famously--from Germany, as shown in this Eurostat graphic.

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This is a trend not concentrated in any one region of Germany. As the below map shows, sustained low fertility is a nation-wide trend.

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One might think that fertility in Germany would look more like than in neighbouring western European countries like France and the Netherlands, or northern European countries like Denmark and Sweden. Instead, fertility in Germany has been consistently as low as--or even lower than--fertility in southern Europe. Why?

Back in 2009, I wrote a blog post called "On the contradictions between traditional family structures and high completed fertility in developed countries". In it, I briefly compared France with the former West Germany. Both territories are countries at similar levels of economic development with populations of similar size, yet completed fertility has consistently been stronger in France after the Second World War. Jean-Marie Le Goff's paper "Cohabiting unions in France and West Germany: Transitions to first birth and first marriage", in issue 7.18 of Demographic Research, examines the contrast in depth.<br>

French total fertility rates (TFR) have traditionally been higher, on average by the value 0.3 to 0.7 since 1965 (Council of Europe, 2001). In 1965, the TFR was 2.7 in France and 2.4 in West Germany. In both countries, the TFR decreased drastically until the middle of the seventies and levelled off thereafter. In 1999, the TFR was 1.8 in France and 1.4 in West Germany. Moreover, pronounced differences in nonmarital births between France and West Germany have emerged since the beginning of the eighties. France witnessed a big increase in non-marital fertility rates; from roughly 11% in 1980 they reached 41% in 1999. In West Germany, the increase in non-marital births was less pronounced, from 8% to 18% (Council of Europe, 2001). In most developed countries, an increase in non-marital births occurred simultaneously with an increase in non-marital unions (Kiernan 2001a and b). France appears to follow this pattern, but West Germany constitutes an exceptional case.

Women in France, Le Goff argues, have access to a whole variety of family structures, from the traditional nuclear marriage family to a family marked by cohabitation to single motherhood, with a relatively long tradition of recognizing the responsibilities of parents towards their children regardless of their legal status, with the idea of mothers working outside of the home not only being accepted but supported by any number subsidies to parents to affordable and accessible day care. In West Germany, social and policy norms tend to support traditional family structures. The result? In France, people are childbearing age are split between two sectors, one defined by marriage relationships and the other defined by cohabitation relationships. On the other side of the Rhine, people of childbearing age are split between people who have children and people who don't. Katja Köppen's "Second births in Western Germany and France" (Demographic Research 14.14) further points out that whereas Frenchwomen seem to enjoy an institutional structure that encourages motherhood and there isn't a contradiction between high levels of education--hence employment--and fertility, there is such a contradiction in western Germany, with government spending priorities in the latter country being directed towards the support of traditional families. It's not too much of a surprise, then, that the German Federal Statistics Office reported that the proportions of childless women were rising, particularly in the former West Germany.

The number of childless women is increasing in Germany. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), in 2008 21% of the women aged 40 to 44 years had not given birth to a child. By contrast, 16% of the women who were ten years older (birth cohorts from 1954 to 1958) and only 12% of the women who were 20 years older (birth cohorts from 1944 to 1948) were childless. A share of 26% of the women aged between 35 and 39 years had no children yet in 2008. However, the proportion of childless women will still decline in this age group.These and more 2008 microcensus core results regarding childlessness and births in Germany were announced today by Roderich Egeler, President of the Federal Statistical Office, at a press conference in Berlin.In the eastern part of Germany, the number of childless women is by far smaller than in western Germany. While in the ‘old’ Länder, 16% of the women aged 40 to 75 years have no children, their share amounts to only 8% in the ‘new’ Länder. Regarding younger women, too, the difference is considerable. In the ‘old’ Länder, a share of 28% of the women aged between 35 and 39 years (birth cohorts from 1969 to 1973) have no children yet, while the relevant proportion amounts to not more than 16% in the ‘new’ Länder.

In the former East Germany, where in the Communist era different and decidedly non-traditional norms of family prevailed, rates of fertility are now noticeably higher than in the West.

Why was this the case in the first place? Why was West German family policy so much more conservative than in neighbouring western and northern European countries? Why does Germany not look more like France, or perhaps more plausibly given cultural similarities the Netherlands or even Nordic countries? In West Germany, as Toshihiko Hara suggests in the paper "Fertility Trend and Family Policies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands", a reaction to the intrusive policies of the Nazis is responsible.

In Germany, any arguments and policies to promote births are tabooed still today due to nightmare memories about pro-natalistic policies which accompanied racial discrimination under the Nazi regime. For this reason, the basic stand point for family policy is that the government should be responsible for family according to constitutional prescription but act only in a subsidiary function to marriage and family and avoid any intervention in individual affairs. Thus, the family policies in former West Germany, historically have been designed to encourage and sustain the traditional, two parent family with an "at- home" mother caring for children, through financial measures to realize an equitable
distribution of the burden of maintaining a family. However, with the social changes in the 1970s, i.e. legalization of abortion, the reform of divorce law, improvement of juristic status of extra-marital child, the family policy has become increasingly concerned with various family models. Then, since the 1980s, the weight of the family policy is shifting to the support for labor participation of mothers and for improving the child rearing environment, through the extended three-year parental leave with the child-rearing allowance, an acknowledgement of the rearing period in pension law and so on.

In contrast to former West Germany, the government in former East Germany performed a series of pro-natalistic policy measures from 1976 under the slogan of " build up the Socialist Nation" and they realized even a short term rise of fertility. The major purpose of this policy was to promote labor participation of women (and fertility) for expanding of labor supply source (in future) . In fact, they were supportive of labor policy rather than family policy. They have realized the high level of job participation in married women and the developed child care facilities. On the other side, they have increased the extra-marital births through the preferential dwelling support for single mothers and decreased the mean age of first marriage and birth, by giving the priority to married mother for using the child care center. These legacies remains still today in former East Germany long after unification.


A reaction, in West Germany, to the totalitarian motives of East Germany in deeply involving itself in family formation also seems to have played a role in dissuading West Germany policymakers from making institutional changes to the traditional social conservatism of the German welfare state. The eventual result of this sustained commitment to traditional family structures, as described in Jürgen Dorbritz's 2008 "Germany: Family diversity with low actual and desired fertility" (Demographic Research 19.17), was to accentuate the shift in Germany towards low fertility, with one notable theme being people who--given different policies--might have opted to form families with children in non-traditional families opting not to have children at all.

This anti-totalitarian reaction is understandable. I can readily believe that in democratic West Germany immediately after the horrors of the Second World War, the depoliticization of intimate life was a high priority. The sharp drop in fertility in Germany relative to its regional peers may well have been overdetermined. It should go without saying that keeping the reaction of the post-war years well after the reaction was useful has not been at all helpful. This can conceivably change over time, though, but there is still going to be a demographic deficit in the numbers of people of childbearing age in Germany, a consequence of the below-replacement fertility that has prevailed since the early 1970s.

Could things have been different? Might the West German welfare state, and West Germans mores, have altered to become more flexible, resulting in substantially higher levels of fertility on the model of the Netherlands or perhaps the Nordic countries? These countries have sub-replacement fertility, like the rest of the developed world, but they have near-replacement fertility levels with substantially higher fertility rates and lower levels of childlessness. The demographic situation of Sweden might be too much to hope for, but the Netherlands seems not impossiible.

If this did happen, what would the consequences be? There would still be a sharp drop in fertility in the 1970s, but it would not fall to the very low levels of OTL and it would likely rise somewhat from its nadir. Let's say TFRs track the Netherlands, with a fall in West Germany to ~1.5 in the early 1980s, rising to 1.6 by 1990, and then to 1.7 by 2000. Birth rates would be something like 30% higher. The big economic changes would come in the 1990s, when you have a substantially larger cohort of native-born workers entering working age. At the same time, Germany would also still be attracting migrants internationally, refugees and otherwise. What would unemployment be like? What would economic growth be like? Would a larger domestic market promote consumption?

A Germany of 90 million by 2016?
 
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I think this misses the point. Alot of the reasons for French and British TFR increases is due to significant immigration (permanent immigration not guest workers) from ex-colonies. These are having significantly larger families (at least for a couple of generations) than the more established populations.

Alot of German immigration is based on guest workers repatriating funds to support families that stay in the mother country.

All of this may change with Syrian / Afghanistan / Eritrean refugees who are very different from the Turkish and Balkan guest workers that previously made up most of Germany's immigrant population. In fact it has been said that this is one reason why Germany is more open to such immigration as they haven't seen an earlier wave already.
 

Raunchel

Banned
There are other reasons as well, but things are changing. In Germany, there was a terrible lack of things supporting motherhood while remaining in the workforce, and many (especially highly educated) women chose to keep working, thereby not having children. Recently, this has been starting to change, and the birthrate (at least, as far as I know) is actually going up again.
 
German fertility has been rising since 2011. Last year it was the highest in 25 years and current state prognosis expects it to rise further and stabilize around 2019 when it will be over 2.1.
 
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It seems like it is something that is extremely unlikely to change for the Germans; in the French case, change of state policies towards fertility came after active population fall in the 1930s, long time political efforts/awareness over the demographic issue (starting with meetings in the 1870s, population falls in the 1890s, extensive parliamentary debate over the matter in the late 1890s and early 1900s, post-ww1 pro-natalist laws, extensive 1920s and 1930s political awareness, population falls in the 1930s, and the 1939 Code de la Famille, and a host of other events that I forget off-hand) and growing concerns about France losing its position in the world due to population decline. In Germany, all of the factors that promoted French pro-natalist policies are gone. The Germans weren't losing their position in the world due to population decline (unless if we count them vis a vis the USSR, but that has entirely different levels that just population decline), they didn't experience the same population fall in peace-time that the French did in the 1930s, they - as far as I am aware, I am much more interested in French demographics than German demographics - didn't have the same political pressure over pro-natalist policies that the French did, and of course their pro-natalistic policies when implemented in the 1930s were implemented by a fascist government, as compared to the majority of French programs being implemented under the IIIrd Republic. Which gives them something of a different aura between the two nations.

This isn't even counting underlined cultural differences concerning family life and the balance of workplace and childcare for women. Combine all of these, and it is something that there is no political interest in making decisions on, and where if we are to believe your article's presumptions concerning the differing nature of French vs. German social policy, would probably make actively worse if the state did try to interfere beyond the run of the mill pro-natalist policies of paying people to have children and giving them medals for doing that. The effects of that tend to be limited, and it takes a much more thorough change of social policies to achieve higher birth rates than only throwing money at the problem.

As had been mentioned in the East Germany there was a pro-natalist policies, and as I recall from the article that I don't have on me right now, on that there was success in re-raising the birth rate after a previous decline (above FRG levels, until the 1990s - it appears to have eclipsed West German fertility again recently). But unless if you're interested in placing the rest of Germany under the GDR, then it seems unlikely that that is helpful in fulfilling your interest in raising the German TFR.

I think this misses the point. Alot of the reasons for French and British TFR increases is due to significant immigration (permanent immigration not guest workers) from ex-colonies. These are having significantly larger families (at least for a couple of generations) than the more established populations.

Alot of German immigration is based on guest workers repatriating funds to support families that stay in the mother country.

All of this may change with Syrian / Afghanistan / Eritrean refugees who are very different from the Turkish and Balkan guest workers that previously made up most of Germany's immigrant population. In fact it has been said that this is one reason why Germany is more open to such immigration as they haven't seen an earlier wave already.

According to wikipedia (admittedly the stats appear to be for the 1990s), French fertility among metropolitan populations was 1.7. Even assuming no rise and no change in fertility at all among indigenous populations, that still means that French fertility is significantly higher than German TFR. There must also be at least some immigrant births in Germany too, which would mean that the .3 TFR difference would at least continue to exist or might even be understating the fertility difference.

German fertility has been rising since 2011. Last year it was the highest in 25 years and current state prognosis expects it to rise further and stabilize around 2019 when it will be over 2.3.

I find it extraordinarily unlikely that it will rise from 1.44 (as said by the CIA World Factbook, the only first with information on year 2015, which appears to be corroborated by Geobase.se) to 2.3. 2.3 is higher than any developed nation in the world except for Israel (and South Africa, if you count them), and Israel has a number of special statistics covering it that makes it hard to compare. Especially given that German TFR has been, according to Eurostat;

2003; 1.34
2004; 1.36
2005; 1.34
2006; 1.33
2007; 1.37
2008; 1.38
2009; 1.36
2010; 1.39
2011; 1.36
2012; 1.38
2013; 1.40
~~~ (end of Eurostat statistics)
2014 1.43 (Index Mundi)
2015; 1.44

So yes, call me rather skeptical of a prediction stating it will rise to 2.3 by 2019.
 
Actually this is a pretty interesting question in today's context as well. I seem to remember reading that it was suggested that Merkel's response to the Syrian refugees was influenced by Germany's aging and declining population and a desire to bring in new young people to the country. I dont know how much truth there is to that but modern Germany certainly has a record of trying to encourage young people to come over and train and later work in the country:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32821678

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-16159943

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24131534

Their "Earn as you learn" model is particularly attractive. Foreigners (mainly other EU citizens) can go to Germany, get a company to pay for your education and training in a trade while you work and then give you a good job once you get your diploma. It certainly helps that "German Engineering" is such a strong brand as well.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
A little word about "pro-natalistic policies of the GDR" from someone, who has actually (???) been there :
Reason to get a child :
1. you are priviledged in the fight for living space - even if it has to be a "Plattenbau", then a true "honor" to be assigned to such a flat.
2. you don't have to care for the child, the "state" will do that for you. Whatever child might come out of that ...

The earlier a child the earlier you get your own flat.
The more childs you get the bigger the flat you might get assigned to.
 
I think this misses the point. Alot of the reasons for French and British TFR increases is due to significant immigration (permanent immigration not guest workers) from ex-colonies. These are having significantly larger families (at least for a couple of generations) than the more established populations.

That's the case in every country. Even if you subtract immigrant fertility, you still have baseline higher rates of fertility in these countries. Native-born fertility is higher.

There are other reasons as well, but things are changing. In Germany, there was a terrible lack of things supporting motherhood while remaining in the workforce, and many (especially highly educated) women chose to keep working, thereby not having children. Recently, this has been starting to change, and the birthrate (at least, as far as I know) is actually going up again.

Agreed. It's still going to be from a lower level, and I would question if it is likely to stabilize.

A little word about "pro-natalistic policies of the GDR" from someone, who has actually (???) been there :
Reason to get a child :
1. you are priviledged in the fight for living space - even if it has to be a "Plattenbau", then a true "honor" to be assigned to such a flat.
2. you don't have to care for the child, the "state" will do that for you. Whatever child might come out of that ...

The earlier a child the earlier you get your own flat.
The more childs you get the bigger the flat you might get assigned to.

East German fertility was boosted relative to the West in the 1970s and 1980s, but this was a temporary thing. Curiously enough, the change in gender attitudes created by the GDR--specifically, the relative acceptance of the idea of working mothers and non-traditional families--may contribute to the East's slight edge today in fertility.
 
It seems like it is something that is extremely unlikely to change for the Germans; in the French case, change of state policies towards fertility came after active population fall in the 1930s, long time political efforts/awareness over the demographic issue (starting with meetings in the 1870s, population falls in the 1890s, extensive parliamentary debate over the matter in the late 1890s and early 1900s, post-ww1 pro-natalist laws, extensive 1920s and 1930s political awareness, population falls in the 1930s, and the 1939 Code de la Famille, and a host of other events that I forget off-hand) and growing concerns about France losing its position in the world due to population decline. In Germany, all of the factors that promoted French pro-natalist policies are gone. The Germans weren't losing their position in the world due to population decline (unless if we count them vis a vis the USSR, but that has entirely different levels that just population decline), they didn't experience the same population fall in peace-time that the French did in the 1930s, they - as far as I am aware, I am much more interested in French demographics than German demographics - didn't have the same political pressure over pro-natalist policies that the French did, and of course their pro-natalistic policies when implemented in the 1930s were implemented by a fascist government, as compared to the majority of French programs being implemented under the IIIrd Republic. Which gives them something of a different aura between the two nations.

There was a sharp fall in German fertility in the 1930s, but that was relatively recent and from a higher level.

This isn't even counting underlined cultural differences concerning family life and the balance of workplace and childcare for women. Combine all of these, and it is something that there is no political interest in making decisions on, and where if we are to believe your article's presumptions concerning the differing nature of French vs. German social policy, would probably make actively worse if the state did try to interfere beyond the run of the mill pro-natalist policies of paying people to have children and giving them medals for doing that. The effects of that tend to be limited, and it takes a much more thorough change of social policies to achieve higher birth rates than only throwing money at the problem.

It requires a thorough change of social attitudes, not just institutions but public norms.

The Scandinavian states might be better controls. One wonders what might have happened in the Weimar Republic had it survived.
 

elkarlo

Banned
German fertility has been rising since 2011. Last year it was the highest in 25 years and current state prognosis expects it to rise further and stabilize around 2019 when it will be over 2.3.

That mostly has to be from recent immigrants with much higher fertility. I doubt that ethnic Germans will ever hit 2.0
 
That mostly has to be from recent immigrants with much higher fertility. I doubt that ethnic Germans will ever hit 2.0

I wanted to type 2.1 anyway. I am on phone because I don't have a pc currently. 2.3 is indeed a pipe dream.
But I actually think that we will reach 2.1 by 2020.
 
I wanted to type 2.1 anyway. I am on phone because I don't have a pc currently. 2.3 is indeed a pipe dream.
But I actually think that we will reach 2.1 by 2020.

If this was correct, I would be quite interested to see this statistical projection. I am unaware of any authority predicting such a sharp increase in fertility.
 
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