2023-11-05 21:46:56
The very beginning of a life is said to be a sin. A child could do one thing or another in their life that causes greenhouse gas emissions. Some people now shy away from that. In general: climate, crisis, collapse – what kind of world will children live in? Will the Earth be in a condition for comfortable life in a few decades? Are crises, fights and wars increasing?
Jan Hauser
Editor in business, responsible for real estate.
In order to curb climate change, young people are more often considering going without children. The principle behind it goes something like this: Every person needs energy, resources and greenhouse gas emissions. If there were fewer people on earth, emissions could go down – and climate change would somehow take a break. But that doesn’t have to depend on the offspring. There are enough reasons against it.
For younger people, however, climate change plays a role in the desire to have children, as surveys show. Most recently, one in three respondents aged 25 to 29 cited climate change as a reason for doubt. Climate researchers Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas suggested in a 2017 study that choosing to have one’s own children causes significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions, although they also took grandchildren into account and some assumptions are questionable. The author Verena Brunschweiger later called for not having children in a book in order to slow down climate change. You are not alone in this.
Births are falling
Word of the issue has spread to Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens): He spoke of the fact that twenty-year-olds are now considering whether they even want to have children. “I know this debate from my youth, it disappeared for 30 years, now it’s back,” he told “Spiegel” at the beginning of the year. “Understandable, the climate crisis is a reality.” When asked, the ministry explains that Habeck reflects young people’s concerns about the future because of the climate crisis. For him, this is a reason for a consistent climate policy.
The decision about who wants to have children is individual and personal. There are certainly more reasons than climate change that play a role. Everyone can decide for themselves and together with their partner. Everything else restricts freedom.
Births in Germany are actually declining. Last year, 738,919 children were born in this country, around seven percent fewer than the year before. The number of deaths, however, rose by around 4 percent to around 1.06 million. For half a century the number of deaths has exceeded the number of births.
Without immigration, Germany would have been shrinking long ago. Instead, the country has grown to more than 84 million people. Population researcher Frank Swiaczny also points to the higher life expectancy. “The population in Germany has not declined because immigration has been positive in almost all years since 1972 and has even been very positive in recent years,” says the employee at the Federal Institute for Population Research and managing director of the German Society for Demography.
Consequences for social systems
In Germany, the birth rate in 2022 fell by 8 percent to 1.46 children per woman. This is already in the direction of those who want fewer births. In order for a developed country not to shrink, it mathematically needs around 2.1 births per woman – in any case significantly more than now. As a rule, Swiaczny does not observe that the fertility rate suddenly changes significantly and is roughly halved. He mentions that shortly after the reunification of Germany, the birth rate in the eastern German states fell significantly, which has since adjusted again.
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If first the number of births and then the population declines, this has consequences for the country – for example for the social systems. The German pension system will then likely lack even more young contributors to pay for the pensions. If significantly fewer children were born in Germany for a longer period of time, the younger age groups would become narrower and the base of the population pyramid would become thinner. The effect is likely to be that the demand for pediatricians, daycare centers, schools and universities will decrease over time. “The moment these smaller cohorts slip into working life, it is clear that we would have fewer workers with all the difficulties of adaptation and the shortage of skilled workers that we are currently discussing,” says Swiaczny.
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