CGTN Europe speaks to Dr. Paul Morland, Leading demographer and broadcaster and the author of ‘Tomorrow’s People'.
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00:00Let's get more on this now with demographer and broadcaster Dr. Paul Morland, also author of the book Tomorrow's People.
00:07Paul, thanks so much for joining us. Why does Germany have this ultra-low birth rate?
00:13Germany is really not unusual for countries in Europe and East Asia, which have hit modernity,
00:21which we can essentially define as high levels of urbanization, high levels of income,
00:26and at the same time see their fertility rates, the number of children per woman, go low and then very, very low.
00:34As people enter this kind of modern life, unless they have an ideology, a belief, a religion,
00:41that informs them that having children is the most important thing and they prioritize it,
00:46then whether it's Japan or China or Macedonia or Britain or Germany, the fertility rate goes low.
00:53Now, in Germany, one of the problems is not just that it's very low now,
00:57but it's been below most of the rest of the developed world for a long time.
01:02And that means that there are very few young people coming through to the workforce.
01:06So you've got to think about what is it now, what are we building up problematically for the future, which is ultra-low,
01:12and how low has it been for the last couple of generations, which means you've got lots and lots of old people,
01:18not enough young people coming into the workforce, too many people requiring pensions and health care,
01:23and not a lot of people paying tax.
01:25So if it's at the bottom line, obviously there are lots of different reasons,
01:29but if finances and economics is at the heart of it,
01:33surely the best way is for government to offer an incentive for people having a second and third child.
01:39Does that work?
01:41Well, first of all, the paradox is that as countries get richer, their fertility rates go down, generally.
01:47And then once they're low, the question is about their values rather than material wealth.
01:52Now, I think governments can do an awful lot.
01:54Governments can give child benefits.
01:56Governments can encourage women to combine education and working with childbearing by giving them rights in the workplace.
02:06There are a whole range of policies that governments can offer.
02:09But if that's not combined with a pronatal culture,
02:13if people have values and priorities that don't rate having children highly,
02:18then there's actually not much the government can do.
02:21It is important, however, that the government signals its intentions because that is a good start.
02:27Whether those policies are effective or not, it's at least a good start if the government says this matters to us.
02:33That's how you start to change the culture.
02:36How could this impact future migration patterns?
02:39We know that some countries in Africa, for example, still have high birth rates and they're living longer.
02:45So potentially there's a lot of people in Africa who could come to Europe to look after an aging population.
02:51Is that starting to happen?
02:53Well, it started out a long time ago in countries like Germany, Britain, France.
02:58We historically had a lot of immigration from other parts of Europe.
03:02In Britain, for example, from Ireland and Poland.
03:04Germany had a lot of immigration from Italy in the 50s and also from Turkey.
03:08But these are all countries which now have much lower fertility rates themselves.
03:13The living standard gap has closed.
03:15And so more and more countries who can afford to attract immigrants are having to attract them
03:21from fewer and fewer countries that still have a fertility rate.
03:25The trouble is that those countries with high fertility rates are increasingly poor.
03:30They're increasingly countries where there's very low levels of education and human development.
03:37And so what we're seeing in Europe, across Europe, it's not just Germany, is where there is mass immigration,
03:43it's from countries with very low levels of economic productivity.
03:47And so it might be plugging some of the gaps in the workforce, but it's not actually helping the economy as a whole.