Population Forecast

Population

The population forecast as of autumn 2024 is based on the population figures published in the 2022 census and is shown at district level. As bulwiengesa does not have any current coordinated population projections from the state offices at this time, it has made its own estimate using the cohort component method.

The model incorporates empirically based assumptions on the demographically relevant variables of fertility, mortality and migration.

Eurostat has modelled projections on fertility and mortality at the level of rural districts and independent cities with the base year 2019 into the future up to 2060. The 2019 data was adjusted by bulwiengesa for developments that have occurred since then to the level of 2023 and subsequently used for the projection.

The modelling of fertility according to Eurostat combines a country-specific trend extrapolation and the assumption that fertility in the EU countries will converge to the level of the countries with above-average fertility (Ireland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands) by 2100. The average Germany-wide starting level of fertility in 2023 was adjusted to the value determined by the Federal Statistical Office (1.35 children per woman over her lifetime); this value will rise to 1.41 by 2060.

For the development of mortality, it is assumed that it will decrease more in the near future than in the more distant future, meaning that the rate of increase in longevity will decrease. In the years from 2020 onwards, higher mortality rates were observed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were assumed to return to the initial level of 2019 in 2024, meaning that the pandemic will have no long-term impact on mortality.

For migration, the assumptions of the Federal Statistical Office and historical migration movements were used. Average migration relationships with other countries and internal migration movements are analysed at district level in order to be able to derive expected migration movements for the future from these patterns.

As part of the 15th coordinated population projection for the future up to 2060, the Federal Statistical Office assumes in the ‘moderate’ immigration scenario (i.e. the middle of three different scenarios) that Germany's external migration balance (‘immigration minus emigration’) will first rise from the initial value of 329,000 in 2021 to 1.3 million in 2022, fall to 513,000 in 2023 and then decline continuously until 2033 to an eventual 250,000 per year. From 2033, the balance will remain constant at 250,000.

bulwiengesa largely adopts this assumption, although net migration in 2023 is set at the now published value of 663,000.

Households

The definition of households corresponds to the definition of the BBSR, which was already used in the past, and not to the delimitation by the 2022 census, so the data cannot be compared with the household figures of the census.

In order to be able to derive a household forecast from the results of the population forecast described above, the structure (1-person, 2-person, 3-person & 4-plus-person households) and their future development based on the assumptions of the BBSR's spatial planning forecast were used.

Data:
annual