Childlessness in East and West Germany : Long-Term Trends and Social Disparities

This chapter provides an overview of the long-term trends in childlessness in East and West Germany. Based on vital statistics, census, and micro-census data we show that for the East German cohorts born in 1940–1964 the share who have remained childless has stalled at around 10 %. For the same cohorts in West Germany, we find that the share who are childless has increased from 10 % to about 20 %. We furthermore describe socio-economic disparities in the childlessness levels of West German birth cohorts based on our analysis of data from the German Family Panel (pairfam). We find that higher levels of female education are associated with higher levels of childlessness, but that differences by education have narrowed among women of recent birth cohorts. For men, we find a clear negative gradient in childlessness, as less educated men are more likely to be childless than their better educated counterparts. Finally, having a turbulent partnership history is shown to be associated with a high probability of remaining childless.