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Depopulation in Germany

Fading echoes

德国人口衰减

回声渐逝

Germany is running out of people, starting in the east

德国人口正在减少，东德首当其冲。

WERE it not for the graffiti on abandoned buildings, Bitterfeld-Wolfen, two towns north of Leipzig joined as one in 2007, would seem devoid of young people.

Pharmacies, physiotherapy surgeries and shops selling garden gnomes line the sleepy streets. In its heyday the place had a booming chemical industry. Today “the air is much cleaner and we can finally hang out laundry,” says an elderly local out on a morning stroll. “But many jobs were lost and so few children are left.” He points out a building that was once a school; today it is one of many care homes.

要不是看到废弃的建筑上画着涂鸦，比特菲尔德-沃尔芬，这个由莱比锡北部两个小城合并而成的城市，几乎看不到年轻人。药店、理疗馆、卖花园小矮人的商店沿着毫无生气的街道一字排开。在鼎盛时期，这里曾有蓬勃的化工产业。如今“空气干净多了，总算可以在外面晾衣服了”一名早起出门溜达的当地老人说，“但是许多工作机会没有了，也没几个年轻人会留下来”。他指了指一所曾是学校的建筑，如今变成了众多养老院中的一家。

Despite an influx of 1.2m refugees over the past two years, Germany’s population faces near-irreversible decline. According to predictions from the UN in 2015, two in five Germans will be over 60 by 2050 and Europe’s oldest country will have shrunk to 75m from 82m. Since the 1970s, more Germans have been dying than are born. Fewer births and longer lives are a problem for most rich countries. But the consequences are more acute for Germany, where birth rates are lower than in Britain and France.

尽管过去的两年涌入了120万难民，德国人口面临着几乎不可逆转的萎缩。根据联合国2015年的预测，到2050年，40%的德国人将超过60岁。欧洲老龄化最严重国家的人口将从现在的8200万缩减到7500万。自1970年以来，德国的死亡人口就超过了出生人口。在大多数富裕国家，出生率愈低，寿命愈长是一个问题。但其后果在德国表现得要更为严峻，德国的出生率比英国和法国都要低。

If Germany is a warning for others, its eastern part is a warning for its west. If it were still a country, East Germany would be the oldest in the world. Nearly 30 years after unification the region still suffers the aftershock from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when millions—mostly young, mostly women—fled for the west. Those who remained had record-low birth rates. “Kids not born in the ’90s, also didn’t have kids in the 2010s. It’s the echo of the echo,” says Frank Swiaczny from the Federal Institute for Population Research, a think-tank in Wiesbaden. The east’s population will shrink from 12.5m in 2016 to 8.7m by 2060, according to government statistics. Saxony-Anhalt, the state to which Bitterfeld-Wolfen belongs, is ahead of the curve.

如果说德国对其他国家来说是一个警示的话，那么东德也为西德敲响了警钟。如果东德依然是一个国家，1989年柏林墙倒塌，当时数百万人，绝大部分是年轻人和女人逃往西德。那些留下来的人出生率达到历史最低点。尽管统一已近30年，该地区依然未从1989年柏林墙倒塌的余波中恢复过来。“没有90年代出生的孩子，因而也没有2010年代出生的孩子。这是一个恶性循环”。供职于威斯巴登智库联邦人口研究院的弗兰克·斯威亚茨先生如是说。根据政府统计，东德的人口将从2016年的1250万缩减到2060年的870万。比特菲尔德-沃尔芬市所在的萨克森-安哈尔特州提前进入了下降曲线。