Overview of The Demographic Changes of Germany

«Demographic change is one of our great challenges» Wolfgang Schäuble

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Germany may be Europe’s economic growth engine, but there’s one thing that the country is failing to produce in big numbers: Germans. The population projections regarding to Germany show that the country’s population, which was 81.1 million in 2014, in a way of inescapable decline. According to the studies, Germany’s population will grow weakly in the next few years before turning down for good. By 2060, the population will fall to between 68 million and 73 million people, a loss of between 8 million and 13 million residents from today’s level. In the long term, a decline in Germany’s population is inevitable. The number of deaths will increasingly exceed the number of births. The positive balance of immigration into and emigration from Germany cannot close this gap for good.

What is more, population’s decrease is affecting multiple areas in the country. The working-age population will be greatly affected by population decline and ageing of the population. The working age which is defined as the age between 20 and 64, was comprised 49.2 million people in 2013. Their number will decline significantly after 2020, reaching around 44 to 45 million in 2030. In 2060, about 38 million people will be of working age, if net migration gradually drops from around 500,000 in 2014 to 200,000 in 2021 and remains constant thereafter which means 60% decline. If immigration drops to 100,000 persons by 2021 and remains constant thereafter, in 2060 the labor force potential will be even smaller, standing at 34 million persons, or –30% compared with 2013. An increase in the birth rate to 1.6 children per woman would only have a stabilizing effect on the number of people of working age from the 2040s onwards. By 2020, the shortage of skilled workers in Germany is expected to be 1.8 million. By 2060, it is expected to hit 3.9 million.

While many EU countries face similar strains, Germany’s are particularly acute. With a strong economy and low unemployment, its working-age population is falling, putting huge pressures on employers. And there are also possible geopolitical consequences: with the British and French populations set to grow, Germany may not remain the EU’s most populous country — or even its biggest economy after 2050, with implications for Europe’s balance of power.

Another demographics aspect that has major effect on the population of Germany is migration. In 2015, about 995,000 first-time asylum applications were submitted in countries of the European Union, more than twice the number of 2014. Germany has become the primary country of destination in Europe for asylum-seekers. Germany is the primary destination country with almost 175,000 asylum-seeker applications.

Germany is part of the Dublin area which is compromised by the EU Member States as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. The Dublin regulations determine which European State is responsible for an asylum claim and seek to ensure that each application entered in the Dublin area is processed by one state only. In 2015, the German Office for Migration and Refugees, along with other offices or ministries from other European States, suspended the Dublin regulations for asylum-seekers from Syria, primarily to accelerate the asylum process based on humanitarian grounds.[1] The number of deportations has increased significantly since 2013 to levels comparable to those about a decade earlier. Germany recorded over 20,000 deportations in 2015. The actual number of deportations represents less than 10 percent of the number of asylum-seekers who are living temporarily in Germany and are legally required to leave. Of the more than 220,000 people required to leave, however, some 172,000 are officially “tolerated” (geduldet) owing to factors such as illness or the lack of papers that prevents the home country from accepting their return.

Furthermore, 1.1 million asylum applications were recorded in the German registration system, EASY. Bavaria and Baden Württemberg have the largest proportion of asylum-seekers with 15.3 percent and 13.0 percent, respectively. Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia rank lowest with 3.4 percent and 2.7 percent.

Despite increasing rates of employment among refugees with longer duration of stay in Germany, it took around 20 years for earlier waves of refugees to attain the employment rate of the national population. Integration courses, including language and remedial courses helped refugees to better get integrated to the society. In Germany, asylum-seekers who have good prospects for granted stay have access to such courses. Increases in the number of asylum-seekers with granted refugee status have led to a rise in the number of participants in integration courses. Some 283,000 refugees were eligible to participate in integration courses in 2015, a 34 percent in-crease over 2014. Around 179,000 refugees attended integration courses in 2015, an increase of 26 percent from 2014.

There are some populist scholars claiming that refugees coming to Germany could become a security threat. On the other hand, the security situation in Germany remains stable against the populist claims. Crimes committed by migrants dropped by more than 36 percent between January and June of 2016.