Why Germany’s birth rate is rising and Italy’s isn’t

IN 1907 AN anxious Austrian, Emil Reich, predicted that Germany would have a population of 150m in 1980 and as many as 200m by the year 2000. It seemed plausible at the time. Germany had a high birth rate and a falling mortality rate. Reich’s prediction, in his book “Germany’s Swelled Head”, turned out to be completely wrong. By the early 1980s East and West Germany had a combined fertility rate lower than anywhere in the world except Denmark and the Channel Islands. Far from exploding, Germany’s population seemed doomed to rapid decline.