Germany’s well-known demographic time bomb – not having enough children to sustain the country’s rapidly aging population – is compounded by the fact that the majority of children, born in Germany, increasingly grow up in impoverished families hampered by a lack of education, bad nutrition, and poor health. According to the Kinderreport 2007 recently released by the NGO Children’s Charity of Germany , the number of children living on welfare in Germany is approximately 2.5 million, more than twice the number of three years ago. Today, 1 in 6 children need welfare support, up from 1 in 75 in 1965. This rise in child poverty, despite decades of economic expansion, is staggering. Juergen Borchert, a Kinderreport co-author, describes Germany’s demographic problems in truly dramatic terms: “Germany, the home of the Kindergarten, is now the worst developed country in which to raise children. This particular attitude goes back to the post-war period as society took a stand against the Nazi era. Family policy still suffers from the fact that Hitler adopted a specifically pro-family policy for the soldiers.”
In general, children from Muslim immigrant families, whose parents frequently refuse to integrate into German society for religious or cultural reasons, are hardest hit by child poverty. In Germany, where the fertility rate is 1.37 children per woman, 35 percent of all newborns today already have a non-German “migration background.” While France has a fertility rate of 1.9, two out of every five newborns are children of Arab or African immigrants. Paradoxically, fertility rates in Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc., are lower than among immigrants from these countries in Europe. The reason behind this phenomenon is that Europe’s relatively lavish welfare systems create financial incentives for immigrant families to have more children than they would otherwise have back home. For German women or families, , the proposed welfare benefits have generally been too low to be attractive. Today, an estimated 35-40 percent of all university-educated women in Germany do not have any children at all. This new kind of “brain drain” should be a cause of serious concern for a resource-poor country that prides itself on being the “Land of Ideas,” a driver of innovative technologies, and the world’s top exporter.
Earlier this year, in an effort to reverse Germany’s demographic decline, the Merkel government introduced “parents’ money” – a new, tax-financed scheme that provides parents with up to two-thirds of their most recent net income for a period of 12-14 months after the baby is born. These payments vary according to the parents’ financial situation (with a cap of EUR 1,800 per month) and, for the first time, provide a financial incentive for better-educated, higher-income Germans – those previously reluctant to have children because of the negative impact on their earnings – to have children. It is too early to tell whether this innovative scheme will go according to plan. After all, arguably the most important demographic factor in all of this is whether young men and women are optimistic about their own futures as well as those of their potential offspring.
Unfortunately, more government spending to encourage people in Germany to have (more) children and to lift existing children out of poverty could have a perverse side effect and further aggravate another kind of “brain drain.” As conservative analysts have pointed out, Europe’s extensive welfare systems – financed by high taxes – have already produced a massive brain drain among the young and well-educated in Germany and other European countries. These men and women increasingly “vote with their feet”, moving abroad in pursuit of better opportunities.
Ulf Gartzke is a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University’s BMW Center for German and European Studies in Washington, DC. He also writes a weekly commentary about German and European affairs for the Weekly Standard Blog.
- 3
