Age-Standardized Fertility Rates for Germany
While birth rates are declining, it's not unprecedented in comparison to previous years.
There have been many rumors and analyses suggesting that COVID-19 or the vaccines might have impacted birth rates. In this analysis, I examined the official data on German birth rates to investigate this claim.
Births
The absolute number of live births occurring in a population within a specified period, usually a year.
Crude Birth Rate (CBR)
This rate expresses the number of live births per 1,000 people in the total population per year.
General Fertility Rate (GFR)
This rate expresses the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-49 years) per year.
All three previous charts show that current levels are similar to the early 2010’s, so nothing too unusual.
Age-Specific Fertility Rate (ASFR)
This rate expresses the number of live births per 1,000 women in a specific age group per year.
Unfortunately, only data from 2009 onwards is available. Here are the individual rates per age:
I don’t see any obvious signals from either COVID or the vaccinations.
It seems that the current situation might just be within the range of previous declines - likely due to social and economic uncertainty. While it appears they panicked unnecessarily and the injections were unnecessary, we can’t observe anything devastating either.
I might be wrong, though. Let me know what you think!
Code can be found here!
Thank you, Ben, for your excellent work, which I was too lazy to do until now. Shame on me. :-)
However, the matter deserves a differentiated assessment. Here are some arguments:
The very young and old age groups play a subordinate role and underlie different influences. Their contributions are small. Pregnancies of very young mothers are often unwanted and in old mothers, a high proportion is due to artificial insemination. Looking at the most fertile age groups, you can see clear influences. 2021 ranks high as a result of the two lockdowns in spring 2020 and winter 2020/21.
In historical retrospect, we had similarly strong declines after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and after reunification in 1990. In both cases, the causes were clear, but the changes set in gradually and not, as in early 2022, within about two months and in exactly 9 months' time difference to the mass vaccination of fertile people. These are very strong indications.
Socioeconomic influences may have come into play later and currently cannot be separated from a direct limitation of fertility.
and Muslim/African migrants vs. German population birth rates?