Status: 23.08.2021 10:17 a.m.
So far, the corona pandemic has hardly had any impact on the birth rate in Germany. The Federal Statistical Office recorded only a small plus of 1.4 percent in 2021. Only March was noticeable.
The first lockdown during the Corona crisis apparently did not trigger a baby boom in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 315,000 children were born – a good 154,000 girls and almost 162,000 boys. This means that the number of births rose only slightly by 1.4 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.
Only in March was there a noticeable increase: With 33,935 births, six percent or around 3700 more babies were born than in March 2020. According to the demography expert at the Federal Statistical Office, Olga Pötzsch, the high birth rate in March 2021 was due to pregnancies that began with the flattening of the first corona wave and the first easing of the contact restrictions in May 2020. “In the other months marked by the onset of the corona pandemic, the development was inconspicuous,” the statistics office said.
Characteristics of parenting hardly changed
The characteristics of the young parents also changed little compared to the same period in the previous year. 32 percent of the parents were not married, compared to 33 percent in the previous year.
For 46 percent of the mothers it was the first birth, 36 percent already had one child and 18 percent had two or more children in the family. According to the statistical office, this corresponded to the family composition in the same period of the previous year. The proportion of births to mothers with German citizenship was accordingly 77 percent, two percentage points higher than in the same period of the previous year