Germany's Population Issues

Environmental Science – 6M
Week 2
Individual Work

Unlike China, Germany has a declining population growth. The citizens there now worry about not having enough people to fulfill the jobs needed to be done so that they can remain a sustainable country. They have more people leaving the country than new people coming in. Even their own residents are starting to leave. Sure, everybody loves to visit Germany because it’s a hot vacation spot, but very few are staying. In 2009, 734 thousand people left the country while 721 thousand moved in. That’s a huge difference in gaining over 800 thousand people in the year 2000. Statistics showed that in 2009, 13 thousand more people had left. Most of those who leave are usually foreigners from Romania, Turkey, and Poland that are going back to their home lands. The US and Switzerland is the popular choice for the Germans that leave. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there are more people dying every day than babies being born. Statistics say there are only a mere 1.38 children born to every woman… Not quite high enough to keep the population at a comfortable number. Demographers expect that over the next fifty years, Germany’s population will decrease by at least 17 million. A huge loss to the 82 million they have now. There is one thing that slowed down their decrease in natives leaving and that was the global recession. Germans weren’t too quick to leave with an insecurity of obtaining a decent job. They were afraid they wouldn’t be able to make it in other countries so they figured it best they just stay in their own country. Spain had been one of their choice countries to run to but the higher unemployment rates in that country changed their minds about relocating. The chairman of the Expert Advisory Board for Integration and Migration, Klaus J. Bade believes all Germany has to do is to make itself more inviting and attractive to convince more outsiders to want to move there and to make its own people want to stay. He also believes that the main reason Germans want to leave so badly is because of the “narrow hierarchies in German companies, the poor chance of getting ahead and the lack of fairness in recognizing their performance.” (Bade) At the same time, this is what deters outsiders from wanting to relocate to Germany. Who would want to work hard at a company and not get any kind of recognition for it? Germany also has a reputation of not being so welcoming to outsiders. An image “that is not exactly inviting,” Bade stated to the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. (Yeah, I had to look twice at that name too) Memet Kilic, a migration expert at The Green Party stated that the fact is there are 10,000 more leaving Germany and going to Turkey than Turkey migrants moving to Germany. Personally, I feel that Mr. Bade has the right idea. Maybe if Germany were friendlier to the outsiders and made their work places more fulfilling and appreciative of their employees, then the numbers would change drastically. More people would move to Germany and its own residents would stay. They could even start some kind of reward system to the couples that bear children. They could have a better health program that would include covering immigrants from other countries. In close, I feel there are several things Germany could do to improve its population… they just have to put their pride aside and do it!

Reference: emigration up, birth rate down: graying germany contemplates demographic time bomb. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/emigration-up-birth-rate-down-graying-germany-contemplates-demographic-time-bomb-a-697085.html