Is Germany dying out?

[ElmoBlatz]

Source: Exberliner Magazine

“Birth rates at an all-time low!” “The Germans are dying out!” “Catastrophic birth rates!” The headlines couldn’t be more alarming, but the statistics behind them lead to more complex conclusions. Jacinta Nandi and Ben Knight pick apart Germany’s demographic anxieties for Exberliner Magazine.

Germany continues to shrink - Society (21 Jan 10)
If you’ve followed the German media in the last 10 years, or just strolled through a German park during the school holidays, you will have gathered that Germans aren’t making enough babies.

The headlines are melodramatic and sensational, and the statistics are scary, pessimistic - and surprisingly convincing. German women, who for the past 30 years have only been squeezing out 1.4 kids each, are not producing enough offspring to ensure the survival of the German race, culture and pension schemes. According to the latest prognosis (published by the federal statistics office in November), the population will drop to 62 million by 2060, down from 82 million today.

Germany wasn’t always a nation in decline. In fact, until just 20 years ago, the Federal Republic found itself in the middle of what demographers call a “window of opportunity.” This is when a country has a fairly low birth rate – meaning there are relatively few children to pay for and look after – and there is a large adult population still young enough to generate an income. These demographic conditions are considered to be conducive to economic growth, and they come 30 to 40 years after a baby boom. China, for example, is currently considered to be in this phase.


Read more: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100122-24757.html

[Demeter]

1. Reports of Our Demise are Grossly Exaggerated

People are not dying out. Not yet, anyway.

[treestar]

2. Hopefully only a small minority of them are still stuck on their

damnable race and culture. Who cares? There are plenty of people in the world.

[MellowDem]

30. Lots of people are "stuck on their damnable

race and culture", which is perhaps the whole problem, though there is a popular line of thinking that having pride in your race and culture is a perfectly natural and good thing. I'm not so sure of that myself.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. There may be an exodus of Americans someday as things

continue to deteriorate here. We can help repopulate the emptier European nations. (It would be something, eh, for some of us to wind up back where an ancestor or two started out from? :))

[brentspeak]

5. No question there will be more and more Americans knocking on Canada's door as economic refugees n/t

[8 track mind]

10. The wife and I are considering Canada. n/t

[proudohioan]

14. The irony of it all......

[rockymountaindem]

24. No way would I ever go back to where my ancestors came from

Some other European countries are very nice, and if the USA ceased to exist tomorrow they would be fine with me. But for one, my ancestors came here so they and their descendants (me) could live a good life here. I intend to do that. Secondly, those places they came from aren't in very good shape, are much worse off economically and politically than the USA, and according to many still don't cotton to Jews.

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. Yeah. That wouldn' be plan. :^( I am such a Euro-mutt I have a ton

of places choose from, and seem of them would be pretty good.

[HeresyLives]

4. Probably a good reason for that.

In Germany, a Tradition Falls, and Women Rise

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
Published: January 17, 2010

NEUÖTTING, GERMANY — Manuela Maier was branded a bad mother. A Rabenmutter, or raven mother, after the black bird that pushes chicks out of the nest. She was ostracized by other mothers, berated by neighbors and family, and screamed at in a local store.
Her crime? Signing up her 9-year-old son when the local primary school first offered lunch and afternoon classes last autumn — and returning to work.

“I was told: ‘Why do you have children if you can’t take care of them?”’ said Ms. Maier, 47. By comparison, having a first son out of wedlock 21 years ago raised few eyebrows in this traditional Bavarian town, she said.

Ten years into the 21st century, most schools in Germany still end at lunchtime, a tradition that dates back nearly 250 years. That has powerfully sustained the housewife/mother image of German lore and was long credited with producing well-bred, well-read burghers.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/world/europe/18iht-women.html?em=&pagewanted=all

[Boudica the Lyoness]

6. Thanks for the link

I live just outside a town in the US that was settled by Germans about a hundred years ago. (My husbands grandfather homesteaded here over 120 years ago and wasn't German, BTW) Anyway the locals have been breeding with each other ever since and I notice how they want everyone to conform to their ways...nonconformists get the hell out quick. And God help you if you're gay, lol. We have a very high suicide rate!

I'm British, atheist, very liberal, vegetarian, totally off the wall and confusing to the locals. (I gave up on them about 25 years ago).

Your link was insightful and now I wonder if it's a German trait to want every one to conform. Just thinking out loud I guess. I just wrote the locals off as 'bloody Republicans' but now wonder if it's the German influence that doesn't understand/like anything or anyone different them them. They have a total lack of curiosity. I know there must be some really liberal Germans but I think they breed that out of them years ago here...they left for the coast, lol.

[pasto76]

8. not just a german trait

lpenty of subcultures and communities want folks to conform. Look at the republican party for example.

[geardaddy]

20. You must be in WI, MN or TX

Just guessing.

:D

[WriteDown]

9. Wow, been to Germany many times and never knew this...

interesting stuff.

[closeupready]

7. I've been to Germany several times, and I love it, but I couldn't really care less

if they decline populationwise. And as an American, I am ethnically mostly German. Hard to be proud of a culture which helped bring the Holocaust on the world.

Just don't you dare take away my bratwurst! :mad: :rofl:

[Warpy]

11. Germans are in my family tree, too

My dad's family was Alsatian, so I guess after the last war that makes 'em French. It's likely to change in the future, so who knows? The area has been squabbled over almost as long as the Middle East.

In any case, I know how to find the humor. I once had the sternest, stuffiest old German doc one could ever be terrified of dissolve into giggles right in the middle of the nurse's station. Once you find the sense of humor a culture has, you begin to be able to deal with it honestly.

There are strengths and liabilities to every culture. The precision and attention to detail that gave us some of the finest machinery the world has ever known also gave us the most efficient killing machine the world has ever known. No culture on the planet has totally clean hands, however, and it's only a matter of degree and degree is mostly a matter of opportunity.

Cross cultural stuff is hard. No matter how mannerly you are in your own culture, you're going to look like a clod to another culture and they're going to look like clods to you. Best advice I can offer is to do a lot of listening.

[closeupready]

12. "no culture has clean hands" - very true.

To be 100% honest, though, I don't really believe the premise of this story. Even if the birthrate continues falling, the Germans will evolve in such a way as to accommodate many of the North African and Turkish immigrants and their children, leading to a new kind of German culture, much as we in the US accommodate waves of immigrants and see new trends in American culture based upon the cultural mix that goes on here.

Some of the older people may not like that, but they will have no choice, IMO. The newcomers will demand equality, and they will get it; in return, Germans will be able to fund their pensions and generous welfare state.

[WriteDown]

15. Uh...

Turks aren't exactly welcomed in German culture. I have seen it firsthand.

[closeupready]

16. Is that an overgeneralization though?

I think it is. There is a larger point anyway.

[WriteDown]

19. Not really...

Germany has very strong immigration laws and homogeny seems to be high on their list of priorities. . Truthfully, it may be better to be a Turk than a Hungarian or even worse, a Romanian.

[closeupready]

22. Also, let's remember that there is an EC now; they surrendered some of their

decision-making authority with regard to immigration to Brussels. As long as you have a Schengen visa, not anything Germans can do about that.

[Warpy]

17. Exactly, there are plenty of people to import

but there's going to be a lot of grumbling about how they are changing the culture.

As I said, that cross cultural stuff is tough.

[jwirr]

21. Yes, I am also of German descent and when I read this I thought

"good. they will be ready for oil depletion and global warming". Also as to not being able to adjust to other cultures: Many of us started our American venture in German villages but we soon had neighbors of other cultures and when those villages became small town America in the 50s many of us moved to California and other work areas and we adjusted. Sure we still keep some of our traditions but who doesn't? Today my own family contains both black and native American descendants and we are better for it.

[demigoddess]

13. population decline can be a good thing. It gives people more room,

a better chance to get or keep a job. Older people can work longer and be more active. Planet-wide we all need to decline a little. Look at china, implementing their one child rule. If we would decline naturally, we may not come to that but be able to do it naturally.

[daleo]

26. I was at at talk by a demographer/pollster a few months back

By the name of Micheal Adams. He had recently been to Japan, and had talked to people about the demographic situation there, rising average age, low birth rate, etc. He said they seemed to be taking it in stride, and treating it as a natural re-norming of population levels. They seemed ok with Japan re-stabilizing at a lower overall population in the future, since the islands had become very over populated during the 20th century.

He was surprised that they didn't seem too concerned, and speculated that this may be what happens in a lot of the developed world that had become overpopulated during industrialization.

[AlphaCentauri]

29. hopefully the same rules could be apply to third world countries n/t

[Mudoria]

18. Maybe they should start slipping some Viagra in the beer.

[Liberal_Dog]

23. Ths Isn't A New Problem

I remember reading a similar article nearly thirty years ago.

[ddeclue]

25. NO.. it's just going have some demographic changes to reflect immigration

[RedCappedBandit]

28. There are far too many people anyway.

We would be better off if more countries could say the same.