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"The mind is everything; what you think, you become." - Buddha

STIMULATING BIRTH RATES IN GERMANY

For decades, overpopulation zealots advocated smaller family size.  Now with death rates exceeding birth rates in most Western nations, especially in Europe, nations are actually enacting measures to raise birth rates to reverse declining populations.  The December 6 issue of The Economist (www.Economist.com) reported on the efforts of Germany . . .

"Germany is anxiously looking for ways to tackle one of its biggest challenges: a shortage of children . . . In 2000, the average fertility rate for German women was only 1.36 children apiece, one of the lowest in Europe.  Of women born in 1955 -- the latest cohort to pass child-bearing age -- more than a fifth have had no children at all.  Germany is becoming a country dominated by ageing dinkies (double income, no kids).  Besides causing future financing problems for health care and pensions, this is hardly conducive to renewed economic dynamism . . .

"Child rearing, says Gisela Erler, head of pme Familienservice, a child care consultancy, has traditionally been considered a private not a public matter.  Family values once urged that mothers be shielded from the outside world, propogate the German race and leave the kitchen only to go to church . . .

"The consequence is that, in western Germany at least, child care facilities are poor or non-existent (they are better in the east because communists needed women in the workforce).  There is hardly any care for infants and toddlers; most pre-schools close at mid-day; even primary schools are not open much longer.  As women get better educated, it is lack of child care support, not selfishness, that keeps down the birth rate.  Many young women, argues Bert Rurup, an economist, feel they cannot have both children and a career.  High opportunity costs in lost income and career chances encourage women to put off having a baby.  The average first time mother is almost 30.  Nearly half of female academics have no children . . .

"Hence the government's plan to spend 1.5 billion euros a year after 2005 on child care, and to invest 4 billion euros on all-day schools over the next four years."

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