Family Salaries and the East German Birth Rate

A Comment

Bibliographic Data

ID4121018
AuthorsDaniel R Vining (corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume10
Issue4
Pages693
Publication date1984-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopulation and Development Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0098-7921 • E-ISSN: 1728-4457
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1973288
OpenAlexW2313655980
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Richard Tomlinson, in a recent article on the French population debate in The Public Interest, America's leading neoconservative journal, states that When in 1977 the East German government introduced a 'family salary' of the kind advocated by [former French Prime Minister Michel] Debre, it had no perceptible impact on the birth rate . . . (pp. 118-119).' But, something had a perceptible impact on the East German birth rate around this time. From the mid1970s to the early 1980s, East German births rose by nearly a third, a unique occurrence in all of Europe. It is true, as Tomlinson says, that the East German birth rate is the same as that of France, but what must be realized is that the birth rates of the Germanic and other North European peoples are significantly lower than the already quite low birth rates of the rest of Europe. The total fertility rates (TFRs) of Denmark and West Germany are both around 1.4 (approximately 2.1 children per woman are needed to maintain a low mortality population in the stationary state), and the populations of both are shrinking absolutely, as is the population of Sweden (if we disregard the natural increase of non-Swedes in Sweden).2 The East German TFR was moving entirely in line with that of the rest of Northern Europe (most significantly, West Germany; see Figure 1), reached a low of 1.54 in 1975 (in which year there were 59,000 more deaths than births in East Germany), but then rose sharply upward in 1976 and 1977 (see Figure 1), so that today there is natural increase in East Germany, in contrast to West Germany, where there are 200,000 fewer births than deaths per year (if we ignore births to and deaths of foreigners) and where the TFR has not rebounded at all. (The estimated net reproduction rate for East Germany, 1982, is 0.86; for West Germany, for the same year, 0.63.) Granted, the fertility rate in East Germany is still below replacement, but it is not much below. The fact is that something happened circa 1976-77 to break East German reproduction out of the very low equilib

Archaeology · Birth rate · Demographic economics · Economics · Fertility · Geography · German · Political science · Population · Sociology · Demography · German Economic Analysis & Policies · Global Health Care Issues

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