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Population Dynamics in East and West Germany

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Population Dynamics in East and West Germany ular the expansion of state-sponsored child care, but Population Dynamics in also by developments in the healthcare system and in long-term care insurance. Another related discussion East and West Germany – regards the capacity for financing pension schemes over the long term. In addition, there has been heated debate Projections to 2050 over the content of the new Immigration Act, which has now been ratified and will come into force on 1 January 2005.1 In 2003, the population of Germany declined _ albeit The background to these discussions is the fact that only slightly _ for the first time since 1998. The decrease both future migration dynamics and the continued rise was primarily caused by the combination of a continued in life expectancy will have a significant impact on the excess of deaths over births and a fall in immigration. size of the population and on the ratio of 'inactive' to The decline in the population applied to east Germany, 'active' inhabitants. The DIW Berlin periodically calcu- in particular, while west Germany continued to show a lates population projections in order to illustrate the slight increase. The future demographic trend will effects of alternative assumptions regarding these com- largely depend on migration dynamics, but also on ponents.2 In view of the substantial differences that changes in life expectancy. exist with respect to fertility behaviour, life expectancy As the future development of these two parameters and migration behaviour, distinctions are made between remains uncertain, the DIW Berlin population forecast east and west Germany, and between Germans and for- for east and west Germany presented in this report was eigners. calculated using two variants for each case: for net migration, annual average net inflows of 220 000 (vari- ant I) and 270 000 (variant II); for life expectancy, an Past trends and future assumptions alleviated growth rate (variant A) and a constant growth rate (variant B). According to variant IA, the At the end of 2003, Germany had a population of around population of west Germany will increase by around 82.5 million, 67.7 million of whom lived in west Ger- 2 million to 69.5 million in 2020, but subsequently fall to many and 14.8 million in east Germany (cf. table 1). East just under 65 million by 2050. In east Germany, immi- and west Germany have experienced contrasting trends gration from abroad will be just sufficient to counterbal- since 1989. While west Germany has seen massive ance the natural decline in the population and the ongo- inflows, which have vastly offset the low natural decline ing emigration to west Germany up to 2020. Subse- in the population, in east Germany the drastic fall in the quently, the east German population will decrease _ to number of births has exacerbated the negative trend 14 million in 2050. The population of Germany as a caused by emigration, and immigration from abroad has whole will then amount to 79 million. According to vari- not sufficed to counterbalance the downturn. Between ant IIB, which has higher inflows and steadily rising life 1989 and 2003, east Germany lost around 1.8 million expectancy, even over the long term the population of inhabitants, while the population of west Germany Germany will not fall below its current level. According increased by around 6 million. to these calculations, in 2050 the population of east Ger- many will be only slightly lower than it is today, while west Germany can expect a population increase of Fertility trends around 1 million to 68.5 million by that time. Although the two variants show significant differ- The fertility behaviour of German women has changed ences in the level of population at the end of the forecast perceptibly in recent decades both in east and in west period, the shifts in age distribution are almost identical. Germany. While the 1930 cohort still achieved the main- East Germany will be more affected by the ageing of tenance level _ in other words, 1000 women gave birth society than west Germany. The old-age dependence over the course of their lives to around 2100 children _ ratio, i.e. the ratio of the number of persons aged 65 and the 1950 cohort fell significantly below this level: in east over to those aged between 20 and 64, will rise from 28% to around 54% in west Germany and from 28% to 62% (IA) or 63% (IIB) in east Germany. 1 www.bmi.bund.de/Annex/de_25620/Gesetzestext_des_Zuwande- Long-term population forecasts are the basis for rungsgesetzes_Arbeitsgrundlage.pdf. 2 long-term planning and political decision-making proc- The last population forecast was published in 1999. Cf. Erika Schulz: 'Zur langfristigen Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Deutschland _ Modell- esses in many realms of society. Today, the public rechnungen bis 2050'. In: Wochenbericht des DIW Berlin, no. 42/1999, debate is dominated not only by family policy, in partic- pp. 745-757. 333 Box 1 DIW Berlin population model In the population model of the DIW Berlin, the population is base population at the end of 2001. However, this will no projected forward using the component method. The starting longer be possible in the future without creating severe distor- point is the population by single year of age, sex and national- tions. In other words, this is probably the last forecast which is ity for east and west Germany. Using data on births, deaths structured according to the 'old' subdivision of regions. and population inflows and outflows (differentiated for domes- The impact of the new citizenship law is even more significant. tic and external migration), the population at the beginning of Under this law, which came into force on 1 January 2000, chil- the year is then extrapolated and aged by one year. The fore- dren of foreign parents are automatically granted German citi- cast of the individual parameters (birth and death rates, zenship if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for inflows and outflows) is based on analyses of past long-term at least eight years. Most of these children also inherit their trends. The fertility behaviour of German women is analysed parents' nationality at birth. Between the ages of 18 and 23, and projected by year of birth (cohorts). The analysis and pro- they can then opt for one of the two nationalities. If they fail to jection of external migration is carried out separately for the act, they forfeit their German citizenship. In other words, while different population groups (ethnic German immigrants, other naturalised Germans acquire permanent German citizenship, Germans, asylum seekers, EU citizens, other foreigners), children with dual citizenship risk 'denaturalisation' between because these figures are significant, for example with the ages of 18 and 23. The DIW Berlin population model was respect to their distribution across the individual federal states revised to account for this change by drawing up separate (and therefore between east and west Germany). forecasts for these children and listing some of them as for- It is no longer possible to project the population trend sepa- eigners again between the ages of 18 and 23. Naturalisations rately for Germans and foreigners and for east and west Ger- are taken into account by means of an age- and sex-specific mans as in previous forecasts because of the new German naturalisation rate. citizenship law, the growing importance of naturalisation and In addition, the single years of age of the population were the reform of Berlin's borough boundaries. Since the Berlin raised to 115 years in view of the increasing number of borough reform of 1 January 2001, it is no longer possible to extremely old people in the population. The model's previous differentiate easily between East and West Berlin. For this maximum age was 100. forecast, the distribution for the year 2000 was used for the Germany, 1800 children were born per 1000 women, expected in 1995, never really materialised. While the while in west Germany the figure fell to less than 1700 period-specific birth rates are now gradually recovering, children (cf. table 2). Not only did the pro-natalistic the younger cohorts in east Germany are not bearing measures lead to a higher birth rate in the former Ger- any more children than those in west Germany. All in man Democratic Republic, but the age of women at all, recent years have tended to see an alignment with birth-giving of their first child was also much lower fertility behaviour in west Germany, which has been rel- than in the Federal Republic of Germany. Almost every atively stable since the 1970 cohort. Little change is now woman born in 1950 had become a mother by the age of expected in this respect (around 1400 children for every 21, and only 8% of women had no children. 1000 women), and it is assumed that there will be only a The political changes in east Germany have led to slight upward shift in the age of first-time mothers. massive changes in the fertility behaviour. This It is not possible to carry out a cohort analysis of the becomes particularly evident in the 1970 and successive fertility behaviour of foreigners because of the massive cohorts. Up to around the age of 20, those born in 1970 distortions caused by migration. The period-specific behaved much like those born in 1950, but subsequently total fertility rate of foreign women has decreased sub- the birth rate plummeted (cf. figure 1). The change in the stantially since 1987. In 1999, their birth rate was actu- prevailing social situation, the uncertainty of individu- ally lower than that of German women in west Ger- als regarding their personal and professional futures many.
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