DW: German Population Plunge Expected

[blackhorse]

German Population Plunge Expected

Germany's population will drop by as much as 12 million by 2050 due to low birth rates, according to an official forecast released Tuesday.

The German population will fall to between 69 and 74 million people in the next four decades, according to a study by the Federal Statistics Office. That would equal approximately 15 percent drop from the current population of 82.4 million.

<snip>

What really worries demographers is a seemingly inevitable trend here towards a growing number of elderly people. Statisticians reckon that by 2050 the group of people past the age of 60 in Germany will be twice as high as those under 20. Boys who are born now will on average reach the biblical age of 83.5 years, with girls making it to 88. This will cause a strain on an already overburdened social system which some say will go bankrupt in just a few decades.

"I wouldn't like to use the word 'bankrupt' because it's a major challenge for the social insurance systems, that's for certain," Radermacher said. But the first thing is to reform the social security systems…We can learn from other countries… In every case, you need someone who has to work and give you some earnings."

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2229744,00.html

[hippiechick]

1. Gruss Gott! They need me over there, then!!!

Someone's gotta continue to lead all those Oktoberfest BierGarten Tours ... :rofl:

[Katzenjammer]

5. Im München steht ein Hofbräuhaus. Eins! Zwei! G'suffa!

Da läuft so manches Fäßchen aus.
Eins! Zwei! G'suffa!

:)

[hippiechick]

14. Jah, jah ... deutsches Bier schmeckt mir SEHR gut!

:beer: :toast:

Aber meine Grammatik ist rostig und schrecklich! :blush:

[Katzenjammer]

38. "Aber meine Grammatik ist rostig und schrecklich!"

Das macht ja aber nichts...beim Saufen :)

[lapfog_1]

2. If only this was repeated in every nation on the planet - n/t

[xchrom]

3. if it weren't for immigration -- we'd

be in a boat not far behind.

[ozone_man]

7. That's a nice boat to be in.

Negative population growth. We have twice as many people as the Earth can support as it is. Time to be less fruitful and more considerate of the planet.

[enigma000]

9. It's easier to manage growth than decline

Fewer children, means less people in the workforce. An older population means more people on social security and using government paid medical assistance. Sounds like the whole welfare system there is unsustainable in the long term.

You can be considerate of the planet, or you can have affordable (free?) medical care. Can't have both.

[lapfog_1]

12. That's silly

That is making all kinds of assumptions about how health care is provided and funded. We've been lazy about this because we always had that population growth thing. I bet we can easily come up with a quality of life equal to what we have now, with a declining population.

And do you think those immigrants mentioned contribute enough to maintain the same quality of service our elderly population has been used to receiving? With the system that we have?

And btw, where the heck do you live that you get FREE health care? Mine costs me $900 a month for insurance and that's with a $1000 deductible and $15 co-pay.

[ozone_man]

17. Time to change from the positive growth model.

The U.S. and England (not Scotland) use immigration to stay in positive growth, Spain too. The rest of Western Europe is in zero or negative population growth. And that's a positive trend imo. It's time to think about sustainable economics.

[codjh9]

35. YES

Although falling population IS admittedly a problem when it comes to paying for the elderly - like social security here, for example - rising population is quickly destroying the Earth. We are already consuming '1.2 Earths', and there's apparently more of us to come.

[Nederland]

23. Easily?

Hardly. All the current systems are pay as you go models. In order to switch to something more sustainable, you need to get the current working generation to continue to pay for those that have already retired while simulataneously getting them to save money for their own retirement needs. That translates into a huge tax burden for the current generation...

[lapfog_1]

27. It would be the perfect thing to "borrow" money

to do... but I think we are over-extended on the credit line.

Perhaps it's time to sell off a few assets.

Anyone want to buy Alaska? Hawaii?

Well, anyway, I wrote that it would be easy to "come up with" new solutions, implementation... not so much.

I think we have to eventually... and like most of these problems, it's easier if you address it earlier rather than later (like our debt, global warming, ocean depletion, etc, etc,)

[enigma000]

24. "free" health care in Canada

Of course, there is the wait time: my mom had to wait an entire year for hip replacement surgery. It was "free", of course.

[Nederland]

22. Very true

All the models that first world countries use to take care of their elderly are pay as you go models. They assume that there will be enough people in the next generation to pay for the previous. If that fails to be true, the system falls apart. Unfortunately the solution to this problem--creating individual retirement accounts where each generation pays for its own retirement--is an anathema to the left.

[ozone_man]

30. Pay as you go vs retirement accounts?

We have to think beyond those two alternatives. Like lapfog_1 says, there are going to be some difficult adjustments, largely due to our huge national debt, in addition to our personal debt. We are facing a new era of lower consumption, lower birth rates, if we are to be sustainable as a species and not to cause extinction to nature.

[hogwyld]

32. The reason I hate the IRA's

Is that while it is fine for the wealthy 5% who can afford to set aside money, the majority of working people are living paycheck to paycheck, and can't possibly afford both an IRA AND food, so we choose to eat instead. The government has a duty to provide a stable retirement for the less fortunate amongst us.

[Tight_rope]

34. You need to have work before you even consider needing a workforce.

[hogwyld]

18. I'm with you on that

I would love to see negative population growth until the planet could easily cope with the human virus. About 1 - 2 billion is more than enough for our only home. And a bonus is that with the drastically lower population, there is less competition for limited resources which should lead to no or less war/conflict.

[arewenotdemo]

19. hmmm....the "human virus"

I like that as I have long considered the human race a scourge on the planet. And felt that human viruses were probably the Earth's last hope.

[AngryAmish]

25. There is something you can do today to lessen that scrourge

Since you are a human and you caonsider yourself to be a virus, then act as the Earth's immune system and do what immune systems do to virus to yourself. It is the only just way.

[lapfog_1]

28. We can be better than fruit flies in the petri dish

consuming and reproducing till all of the food source is gone and then simply dying off...

Easter Island provides an extreme example of what we face as a whole.

We can anticipate this and condition ourselves through collective restrictions to prevent it.

China has been doing it for more than 30 years. What they haven't yet figured out is how to make baby girls as socially valuable as baby boys. So their experiment may fail as more Chinese families are able to select gender. But planet wide, we need to adopt a "one baby per couple" rule for at least a generation or two.

[hogwyld]

31. I'm doing my part, how 'bout you?

My family line will end with me. I made the decision to not have children, and had a vasectomy at age 26. If more people took population reversal more seriously, we would all be a lot better off.

[Tight_rope]

33. I totally agreed. I watch the world population clock today!...Fucking scary!

More then 200 people born in 1 minute. I'm doing my part. 36 year old female with "0" kids! And at the rate I'm going I'll be doing good if my friend and family get one outta me. But of course they say I'm being selfish! Imagine that!:beer:

[barb162]

37. And it's difficult these days to use the word "overpopulation"

without being called a bigot

[Igel]

13. But it's not.

Liberal democracies are shrinking, by and large, while some groups that haven't been through the Enlightenment are growing by leaps and bounds.

Expect some real political and ethnic dislocations in the next hundred years or so if things don't change.

[mom cat]

26. Amen to that.

[Katzenjammer]

4. "biblical age"? In what way is 83 a biblical age?

The only one I ever heard of was "three score and ten", i.e. 70.

[Yupster]

15. I wondered about that too

83.5 ???

Translation problem maybe?

[SoCalDem]

6. Catch 22

To get a higher standard of living, smaller families are needed, but at some point when the families get too small, or the children do not have children...well..

Everybody eventually dies, and there has to be someone left behind to carry on..

Perhaps countries will rethink immigration policies to target specific age groups.

And of course with immigration, the demographics changes too..

a thorny issue to be sure.

[sweetheart]

8. and how california becomes mexico,

and germany becomes turkey.

[Bridget Burke]

29. And it's how the edges of the Roman Empire became German....

Things change.

[stepnw1f]

10. I May Get My Dual Citizenship Yet!!!! (nt)

[Blue_Tires]

11. immigrants will probably take up the slack

[Yupster]

16. I read a couple years ago

That some scientist had projected the date on which the last German will officially die.

Silly, but it does point to a very real problem all over Europe and Japan too.

[w4rma]

20. I don't think this is a problem. The only problem is that so many other nations

have high birthrates.

[Quantess]

21. If only every nation could decline their birth rate,

or at least, have zero population growth rate, we would all be better off.

[area51]

36. Hey Germany!

Need people to come over there & work? Look over here! :hi:

There's a big lack of jobs in the U.S. & Americans want to work. Our resumes are on the internet & a lot of us would love to have the chance to work in a civilized country with universal healthcare.

[eridani]

39. A temporary problem

The demographic transition to stability (one in, one out) is going to be tough, requiring old folks to work longer for awhile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikopia

We are all Tikopians now--get used to it.