Number of births in Germany sank in 2019

Some 778,100 babies were born in Germany in 2019, a drop of 9,400 compared with the year before, figures released by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) showed on Wednesday.

Germany's total fertility rate (TFR), also sank from 1.57 to 1.54.

Fourteen of Germany's 16 states recorded a drop in the TFR, with only Bavaria and Bremen remaining at the same level. Bremen and Lower Saxony, both in the northwest of the country, had the highest TFR at 1.6, while Berlin had the lowest at 1.41.

Germans had a TFR of 1.43, only marginally below that of 2018 (1.45). The figure sank more significantly, from 2.12 to 2.06, among non-Germans in the country.

The TFR is the average number of children that would be borne per person of child-bearing age and ability if the person's birth pattern resembled that of everyone capable of giving birth and who was between 15 and 49 in a particular year.

Read more. Germany: Population hits record high

Older parent for firstborns

According to the statistics, the trend to older parenting is continuing in Germany, child-bearing parents were an average of 30.1 years old at the first of their first child. Ten years ago, that average age was 28.8. Child-bearing parents in Hamburg were oldest, 31.2 years old, while those in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt were 28.9 years of age.

The lowest-ever TFR in Germany, at 1.3, was in 1995 shortly after reunification. That figure came about largely because of a massive drop in births in states that had belonged to the former East Germany.

According to the EU statistical agency Eurostat, Germany's TFR in 2018 was slightly above the EU average. The highest TFR in that year was in France, at 1.88, and the lowest in Malta, at 1.23.