Germany Population 2019

Germany is a western-central European country bordered by Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Austria, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Germany is the most populous country in the European Union with an estimated 2019 population of 83.52 million, which ranks 17th in the world.

Despite a drop in the country's growth rate, its 2019 population is now estimated at 83.52 million, which makes Germany the 17th most populous country in the world. It's also the largest country in the European Union. Germany has a population density of about 227/square kilometer (583/square mile), which ranks 58th in the world.

Germany Area and Population Density

When East Germany and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the population of East Germany was around 16.1 million people.

Although living standards have improved dramatically in the East over the past 20 years, it still lags behind in economic development, and as a result, many people head west in search of better job opportunities.

Pollution is also a massive legacy of the East German era, where industrial output was prioritized more highly than the environment, and many seek to move simply for a better quality of life.

The New York Times reports that around 1.7 million people have left East Germany since 1990 -- that's a decrease in population of just over 10%.

Largest Cities in Germany

Germany is divided into 16 states, referred to collectively as Länder, and each state has its own constitution and remains fairly autonomous. Each state also has its own capital. Despite its large population, Germany has relatively few large cities, and only four have a population over 1 million: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne.

Still, these cities are much larger when the metropolitan area is taken into account. Hamburg, for example, has a city population of 1.8 million as of 2012, but its metropolitan area is home to more than 5 million. Düsseldorf, the 7th largest city in Germany, has a population of close to 600,000, but its metropolitan area is home to over 11.3 million.

Here's a full list of the ten largest cities in Germany.

Germany is home to a large number of smaller cities and towns, however, and in total there are currently 82 cities with a population of more than 100,000 people.

Germany Demographics

There are four groups considered "national minorities," which means their ancestors lived in their regions for many centuries. These groups are the Sorbs, Danes, Frisians, and the Roma and Sinti. There are about 50,000 Danes in the northernmost region of Germany. The Sorbs, who are a Slavic people, live in the Lusatia region. There are large populations of Frisians in Lower Saxony and the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein.

About 3.4 million Germans are living abroad.

Germany Religion, Economy and Politics

The majority of Germans are Christian, either Roman Catholic (29.9%) or Protestant (29.8%), although 1.3% of the population are also Orthodox Christians. Islam is the second largest religion in Germany, with an estimated 6.1% of the population according to a 2017 Pew Research Survey. Germany has the second largest Muslim population in Europe, at nearly 5 million, and is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades.

The largest single group, however, is non-believers, who make up 34% of the population. The number of atheists and agnostics is far higher in Eastern Germany than in Western Germany, largely because of the Communist East German state's general policy of discouraging religious belief.

German Population History

Censuses have only been intermittently conducted in Germany, and the last one took place in 1987. Instead, the German Government relies on extrapolations from sample data collected from a small percentage (around 1%) of the population. Still, Germany did participate in the EU-wide census in 2011, which gave much-needed insight into the country's population.

Of all the 27 European Union states, Germany has the highest percentage of immigrants in its population. Over 10 million people living in Germany today were born outside of Germany -- that's about 12% of the German population. Most immigrants come from other European countries, particularly from Turkey, Russia, Poland and Italy. Germany is the second most popular destination for immigrants in the world after the United States.

The German Government has been keen to encourage immigration over the past fifty years -- partly to address longer term demographic problems in Germany, such as its low birth rate, and partly to address shorter term labor shortages.

Germany Population Growth

The country is now spending about $265 million every year on family subsidies in an attempt to reverse a declining population, with little success. Germany has many issues to overcome in order to address this issue, including attitudes in the country toward working women with children who are dubbed "raven mothers" with an implication of neglectfulness or abandonment; additionally, immigrants are not always welcomed with open arms.

Some experts worry that the country has waited too long to try to address its population problem, and raising fertility rates has proven difficult. Giving money to families and tax breaks for stay-at-home mothers and married couples has done little, and demographers believe expanding after-school and daycare programs would be a better investment for the country.

The country will also need to start bringing in more immigrants to fill hundreds of thousands of vacant skilled jobs.

Germany is a representation of the declining fertility rates Europe has seen over the past few decades, and Germany found that it had lost 1.5 million people in its most recent census. This news was a bit of a surprise to the country, which had not conducted a single census since its reunification, even after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It seems Germany missed this population loss because its people value privacy, and the last census in 1987 was very strongly opposed, and the one in 2011 was only done because it was required by the European Union.

Most of the 1.5 million who disappeared were migrants, who apparently did not deregister when they left the country, and thus lived on in records. Germany was found to have 1.1 million fewer foreigners than it thought, and 428,000 fewer Germans.

Germany Population Projections

The growth Germany has seen in the past has slowed almost to a halt in recent years, with a growth rate of only 0.20%. By 2025, the population is expected to start decreasing slightly.

The population is projected to be 82,540,450 by 2020 but will decrease to less than 80,000,000 by 2050.

Components of Population Change