Reading and Speaking 2

17. Read the article given below and discuss it. While reading find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use these words in the further discussion of the problem.

A birth rate, to face smth, economic decline, economics, to determine smth, to table a proposal, (a) welfare (scheme), to require smb to do smth, to have (little) impact on smth, the well-off, to discriminate against smb, a discrepancy

German Birth Rate Falls to Lowest in Europe

The number of children born in Germany last year was the lowest since the end of the Second World War, the Federal Statistics Office reported yesterday. According to the provisional figures, 680,000 babies were born in 2005, down from 1.36 million in 1964. Germany now has the lowest birth rate in Europe with 8.5 births per 1,000 inhabitants, while in Britain it is 12, France 12.7, the Netherlands 11.9 and Ireland 15.2. The figures also show falling birth rates across former communist Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

Leading economists say unless Germans start breeding again Europe’s biggest nation will face the prospect of reduced growth, economic decline and an elderly shrinking population. “We are reaching a critical point,” Michael Hüther, the head of Cologne’s economics institute, told Die Welt newspaper. “The number of births now determines what happens in the next decade and a half or two decades. You can’t revise it afterwards. The availability of human capital will get worse, and act as a brake on growth.” He told the Guardian: “The tradition in the 1950s, 60s and even the 80s in Germany was that a mother was only a mother and looked after the children.”

Last year Germany’s family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, tabled proposals to encourage reluctant couples to have children. They included tax breaks for working couples, more nursery places, and a new state-funded welfare scheme that requires men to take two months off for families to get full funding. So far the changes appear to have had little impact and they have been criticized by some as a perk for the well-off.

Experts have pointed to many reasons why Germans are failing to reproduce – a conservative family culture, with women expected to stay at home; schools that finish at lunchtime; and a tax system that discriminates against working women. “I’d like to have children. But to do so now would kill off my career,” Steffi Warnke, a 31-year-old PhD student at Berlin’s Free University told the Guardian. “The problem is we study in Germany for a long time. When you reach the stage you are applying for an academic job you are 30 – 35. And if you do have kids you don’t get much support. Germany is becoming a society of pensioners. You only have to turn on the TV to see that all the programs are for the over-50s.”

The latest federal figures show wide regional discrepancies. The highest birth rate is in former West Germany, with Wiesbaden (10.5) and Frankfurt (10.2) topping the list. In former communist East Germany, by contrast, the birth rate is alarmingly low, with the city of Chermnitz (6.9) registering the lowest birth rate in the world. According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, by 2050 Europe’s population will have fallen by around 1.5%, or 7 million people.

(From ‘The Guardian’)

Discussion

1. Why is the problem of the falling birth rate so important for European countries?

2. Why are birth rates falling in European countries?

3. How can the problem of falling birth rates be solved? Do you think it is mostly an economic, a psychological or a cultural problem?

4. Do you think women should give up their career to raise children?

5. What do you think of the tendency, which is developing in Western Europe, when fathers stay home to take care of the children while their mothers continue working and become breadwinners in the family?