Germany on track

Cologne (dpa) — Germany’s population is set to fall in the medium term after growing for years, experts said on Monday.

In its latest study, the German Economic Institute (IW) forecasts a decline of 2.9% to around 81.1 million people by 2045.

According to the institute, the main reason for this is the fall in immigration. In their previous forecast, IW researchers had still anticipated moderate growth until 2040.

According to the IW’s calculations, immigration has recently been insufficient to offset the decline in the population caused by deaths. Last year, the population fell by 100,000 to 83.5 million people.

“If you exclude the first year of the pandemic, it was the first decline since 2010,” IW expert Philipp Deschermeier said.

The population is expected to shrink further in the coming years. The economist attributes this primarily to the end of the economic upturn and to the federal government’s measures to limit migration.

Germany on track

Depending on immigration trends, the population could, in an extreme scenario, even fall to just under 78 million by 2045.

In Germany, more people have been dying than babies being born for decades. According to Deschermeier, the fact that the population has not shrunk since the early 2010s is due to immigration.

The introduction of the free movement of workers within the EU, refugee migration and the economic upturn have thus brought about a demographic paradigm shift, he said. Between 2010 and 2024, the population grew from 80.3 million to 83.6 million.

Last year, however, only 250,000 more people arrived in Germany than left, while the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by around 350,000.

Deschermeier expects the negative population balance to widen further due to the ageing of society and the associated higher death rates.