Germany's Baby Deficit

Fire of Liberty

Suzanne Fields has an interesting piece in the Washington Times which points out how Germany's continued fall in fertility rates is placing some great strains on the Germany economy and culture in general. I'd say that they've got to do something after reading these paragraphs:

A new survey finds that Germany has the lowest birthrate in the European Union, but you wouldn't know it here. However, these women are running against the trend. Last year, Germany suffered the steepest declines of births in 15 years, a drop of 4 percent or 30,000 births, from 2004. The Berlin daily Die Welt ran the news under the headline: "Baby Shock: "'We Germans are Dying Out.'"

Germany is not alone as a prosperous country with births falling far below replacement levels, but it has its own reasons. High unemployment creates insecurity, and many professionals don't want the responsibility of balancing work and family. Germans tend to stay in college longer than students in other countries, and young people get used to a carefree life paid for by Germans with jobs. Germans call a university the nation's most effective form of contraception.

Before the decade of the '90s, almost 60 percent of German women between the ages of 25 and 29 had had a baby. That figure is closer to 30 percent today. The birth dearth has relentless implications; 100,000 more Germans die than are born every year. Pessimists estimate that the current population of 82 million could fall to 50 million by 2050, giving new meaning to the phrase "Old Europe."

As I've said time and time before and as Fields notes in her column, the only way the German people(and Europe for that matter) to pull themselves out of this birth dearth is not via the government's intervention but for the young families to take the initiative and start making children. Let's hope they start soon or Europe will see some fundamental changes in the near future.