Last year, exactly 738,819 children were born in Germany. That is significantly less than in 2021 and the lowest level since 2013. And there are regional differences.
After the particularly high number of births in the previous year, significantly fewer children were born in Germany in 2022. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office, 738,819 newborns were counted, which was 56,673 or seven percent fewer than in 2021. At that time, 795,492 babies were registered, the year with the highest number of births since 1997.
birth rates under the conservation level
And the so-called birth rate has also fallen significantly: on average, every woman gave birth to 1.46 children, a decrease of eight percent – and the lowest level since 2013. In 2021 the birth rate had risen significantly to 1.58 children per woman. For a country’s population not to shrink – without immigration – in purely mathematical terms about 2.1 children would have to be born per woman in highly developed countries.
The total fertility rate indicates how many children a woman would have in the course of her life if her fertility behavior were like that of all women between the ages of 15 and 49 in the year under review.
Berlin with the lowest birth rate for years
The birth rate fell in all federal states. “It fell particularly sharply in Hamburg and Berlin,” emphasized the Federal Office, by ten percent each. In Bremen, the decline was weakest at four percent. The women in Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony had the highest birth rates with 1.52 children.
As has been the case since 2017, the lowest birth rate among women in Berlin was 1.25 children. In 2021 it was still 1.39 children per woman. In western Germany, the birth rate fell from 1.60 to 1.48 in the previous year, and in the eastern German federal states from 1.54 to 1.43 children per woman.
mothers average 30.4 years old at first birth
The average age of mothers when their first child was born in 2022 was 30.4 years, slightly lower than in the previous year at 30.5 years. When the mother gave birth to her first child, the mean age of fathers remained unchanged at 33.3 years.
Regardless of whether it was the first or another child, mothers were on average 31.7 years old and fathers 34.7 years old when they gave birth in the past year.
