Germany's Demographic Challenge. The Decreasing Birthrate and its causes

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Discussion and Essays grade: 10 language: English abstract: In the first half of the 20th century Germany lost two World Wars and with that a notable part of its population. Surely afterwards the world should feel lucky about the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. However the situation especially after the second war looked miserable for the country and the countless innocent people. Families fell apart millions of soldiers and civilians were killed and the state became divided into four occupation zones. Moreover unemployment was spread over the whole country. Still with decades of hard work and the acceptance of mistakes that certain people had made in the past the nation revitalized its economy. With legal insurances for healthcare pensions and long-term care the state established a social safety net for everyone. In the 1960s and 1970s the social system seemed to be the perfect one. The economy boomed and the birthrate was consistently growing. Different from now the role allocation within families was very conservative; men went to work and women took care of the children. No one suspected that this way of thinking would drastically change someday. About 40 years later Connolly a correspondent of The Guardian and Observer's Berlin points out that the problem of 'Schrumpfnation Deutschland' (shrinking Germany) will only worsen. Young adults prefer professional careers rather than having children. The social system's base a strong labor force disappears slowly with a constantly decreasing birthrate. Additionally due to the medical and technological improvement the average life expectancy is growing rapidly. Therefore in approximately 30 years the increasing number of people who require pension healthcare and long-term care will challenge the employed population with enormous costs. Germany's government started to tac