Projektion der Erwerbsbevölkerung bis zum Jahr 2060

"This article provides the most recent population projections of the IAB. The results confirm the well-known overall development: The forecast shows a substantially decreasing and ageing population in Germany up to 2060. This trend is attributable only to fertility, as low birth rates determine the current age structure which is most important for the future path of population development. International migration can mitigate the downward trend in population size for some time, but not in the long run. Above all Germany is already experiencing a considerable population ageing, which is expected to speed up within the next few years. That means less younger and more older persons than today are expected to live in Germany. This pattern will almost happen irrespective from immigration trends. For that reason the working age population, aged 15 to 64, will be even more and earlier affected from the demographic change than the overall population. The share of the working age in the total population is projected to decrease considerably. This trend in the working age population strongly reduces the basis of the labor force. As birth rates and mortality rates were rather stable in the past, our projection model is only based on a single projection variant in respect to the natural population movement. On the contrary, migration shows a very volatile movement and is almost unpredictable. Therefore, various projection variants were calculated comprising quite distinct assumptions in respect of migration flows. In other words, the reported projection variants only differ due to migration. We examine the effect of migration applying a completely different approach as other population models, which typically rest on a fixed annual migration balance. On the one hand, we assume a fixed rate of the resident population emigrates. This emigration rate was varied to obtain several projection variants. On the other hand, annual immigration was modeled with a fixed quantity per year, what is the usual practice. One implication of our approach is that net migration of each projection scenario varies over time, as emigration depends on the population of the year before, including all population movements (and migration flows) up to that year. This type of a partly endogenous net migration distinguishes our model from other approaches, e. g. from the well-known projection conducted by the Federal Statistical Office, Germany. One very specific result of this new approach is that each scenario seems to have some limiting value for the net balance. This outcome suggests that extremely annual high net migration might be constraint due to induced emigration. We intend to study this implication more detailed in future." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))