German births at highest level since 2000
June 30, 2016
Germany's Federal Statistics Office said on Thursday that more babies were born in the country than any year since 2005, a sign of hope as the country grapples with an increasingly older population.
According to the report, a total of 738,000 children were born in 2015, an increase of about 3.2 percent from the year before.
Europe's biggest economy, Germany has introduced measures to help stem the aging, including new maternity and paternity benefits.
Although the lifetime birth rate per woman rose to 1.47 in 2014 after hitting a record low of 1.25 in 1995, deaths continue to outnumber births in the country. Around 925,000 people died in 2015, an increase of 6.5 percent.
The overall population is continuing to grow, however, with some 83 million people in Germany reported for 2015 thanks to the influx of more than a million migrants.
blc/kl (Reuters)