Press release No. 016 of 12 January 2021
WIESBADEN – According to a first estimate of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 83.2 million people were living in Germany at the end of 2020. Due to lower net immigration, higher mortality and an expected slightly smaller number of births compared with the previous year, the population did not grow for the first time since 2011. Since the time Germany was reunited three decades ago, the country’s population had mainly been growing; exceptions were the years 1998 and 2003 to 2010. However, population growth had been based only on net immigration, that is, immigration was higher than emigration. Without the migration surplus, the population would have fallen since 1972 because more people died than were born in each year ever since.
