Demographics of Germany

Germany has over 82 million inhabitants, and as such remains the most populous country in the European Union. Despite this large number however, it has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, with only 1.39 children per mother rating. Federal statistices have estimated that the population will shrink to between 74 and 69 million by 2050.

Germany has several large cities, the most popular ones being Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. So far, the largest conurbation is the Rhine-Ruhr region, which includes Dusseldorf and the cities Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Bochum and Duisburg.

As of census records of December 2004, Germany is said to have seven million foreign citizens.

registered, the figure allowing for a 19% percentage of the total number of residents to have come from foreign or at least partially foreign descent. The largest group of foreigners were from Turkey (about 2.3 million) while the rest are from European states such as Serbia, Greece, Italy, Poland and Croatia. In fact, the sheer number of migrations have propelled Germany's population to the rank of third-highest number of international migrants worldwide, with about 10 million of all 191 million migrants, which is 12 percent of Germany's population.

Due to this rather large number, there occurred consequencial restrictions to Germany's formerly rather unrestricted laws on immigration. Because of this, there has been a stead decline of people seeking asylum or claiming German ethnicity since 2004. Guidelines and qualifications for migration have become significantly more strict, trimming down qualified applicants to those with familial ties to German citizens, those whose work requires them to be in Germany, or those sufficient funds to support themselves in Germany.