Demographic Change in Germany from a spatial point of view: beyond East vs. West Introduction

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1 Demographic Change in Germany from a spatial point of view: beyond East vs. West Claus Schlömer (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) within the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR), Bonn, Germany) Introduction For demographers and some few other experts the phenomenon which is now called "demographic change" was clearly visible since it emerged some decades ago. However, among a wider public only in recent years the term has become an important issue. Meanwhile a lot of papers have been written on this matter from a large variety of points of view. There is one simple reason for this growing concern and popularity: More and more people realize that the size, age composition and regional distribution of a country's population are an important framework for many fields of policy. Policy and planning are made "for the people", and very often it is simply necessary to know how many people there are, how old they are, and where they live. This is even more important when these mentioned properties of the population undergo considerable changes, and when these changes eventually become evident. Demographic change, as it is currently understood, consists of three main components. First, there is a change in population dynamics. The population begins to shrink, or to be more precisely, growth takes place only in case of migration gains. The second component, demographic ageing is even more important: the share or the number of younger people is decreasing while the share or the number of older people increases. Finally, the share of immigrants and their descendants grows. This process is called internationalization of the population. Sometimes a forth component is added: individualization refers to the trend that a growing number of people are living in small households with just one or two persons. Figure 1 shows that these components do not occur independently from each other. There are strong interactions between them, making demographic change a complex and comprehensive process. All three basic demographic parameters, i.e. fertility, mortality and migration contribute to it. The details will be explained later in this paper. Yet it should be noted that not all effects point in the same direction. 1

2 Figure 1: Components of demographic change in Germany and their interactions Beyond its relevance for planning and policy, demography can tell us a lot about a country and its regions. Very often demographic processes can be interpreted as an impressive result of social, economic and political circumstances. Historic events have left their marks on today's population. Peculiarities, like a drop in the birth rate or a massive impact of migration can very often be identified in the age composition for decades. In other words: Most people living today in a country or a region have lived there in the past, and many of them will be living there in the future, just being some years older. This is also the main reason why quite reliable forecasts are possible for the population. Even the open questions, how many children will be born and how many people will die within the next, say 20 years can be answered with at least some certainty. Birth rate (fertility) and death rate (mortality) usually follow systematic patterns. They are strongly linked to social conventions and customs, economic needs and, what can be even more important, to biological constraints. To a lesser degree this also holds for migration. Although nobody knows the future, it is useful to give an idea of it. However, such an image of the future should be well-founded and based on reason, not on speculation or guesses. Therefore demographic forecasts are valuable means, both for the needs of planning and policy, and for a better understanding of "what is likely to happen" in a country or a region in the long run. The assumptions of the forecast follow a so called status-quo principle. Its results show what demographic development would occur, if current and recent long-term trends (the status quo) continued. In this paper, the demographic development of Germany in the past, the present and the future is presented. It concentrates on regional contrasts within the general trends. The main focus lies on population dynamics and demographic aging, whereas internationalization is only briefly touched. The source for most of the data and especially the forecast presented is the monitoring system of the German Federal 2

3 Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) and its Spatial Planning Prognosis (Raumordnungsprognose), a system of models that assesses selected benchmark figures of spatial trends of the next about 20 years to come. (see BBR 2006b, Bucher /Schlömer 2009). The national and international level Changing population dynamics The beginning of today's demographic change lies in the past. The pivotal reason is the decline in the total fertility rate (TFR, which can be interpreted as the average number of children per woman) below the level of replacement. In the long run, a human population (in the western world of today) is stable in its number, when about 2.1 children per woman are born. In the baby-boom generation of the 1950s and 1960s this threshold was considerably exceeded in Germany. But after a maximum in 1964 the TFR dropped, in 1970 it fell under the level of replacement and since 1975 it has stabilized at about 1.4 children per woman. The drop in the birth rate after the baby boom is linked to many changes in society that took place in the late 1960s, especially to those concerning the role of women and families. More technically this means, since three decades every birth cohort is about one third smaller than their parents' generation and conditions for an exponential shrinking process are given. This is not a specific German situation. A decline in the fertility rate was recorded in most countries in north-western Europe in the 1970s. Roughly speaking, in the 1980s most countries in southern Europe experienced a similar period, and in the 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain a third wave of decline reached Eastern Europe. Today almost all countries of the developed world have a fertility rate considerably below the level of replacement (see Coleman 2007, Frejka et al. 2008, or UN 2009). The decline in the total fertility rate took place in East and West Germany virtually at the same time (Figure 2). Amazingly, two countries divided by the Iron Curtain, having different economic systems, different social systems and ideologies, still showed a similar development. The changes in society standing behind this seem to have been independent of the political system. In the late 1970s to the mid 1980s a temporary increase took place in East Germany, yet leaving the TFR below replacement level. This was mostly because young families were granted additional financial advantages by the government. Among demographers, this bulge on the diagram is sometimes colloquially called "Honecker-hunchback", named after the former chairman of the council of state in East Germany, who was in office in these years. 3

4 Fig. 2: Total fertility rate in Germany 1871/ In East Germany the fertility rate rapidly collapsed after 1990 to an all-time low of 0.77 in 1994, but recovered in the years afterwards. Currently it is still slightly below the fertility level of the western part of the country. This decline in the early 1990s is more or less directly attributed to the "shock" of changing socialism to capitalism, and it was even deeper than in World War I and at the end of World War II (Fig.2). Despite its meanwhile recovery, its effects will shape East Germanys demography for decades to come. As a result, German population dynamics slowly turns from growth to decline. Besides the special case of East Germany, however, this course was delayed by the intrinsic momentum of the population and the age composition. Still large birth cohorts were in the age groups of parenthood, and many children were born until the 1990s, although the average number of children was already on its low level. At the same time small birth cohorts were in ages of a high mortality, leading to relatively small numbers of deaths. Continuing gains in life expectancy additionally reduced, or rather postponed, the number of deaths. So the intrinsic decline became clearly visible only in the second generation after the drop of the fertility rate. But what is more important, the low fertility was particularly in West Germany counteracted by net immigration. International migration gains reached a peak in the 1990s, just before the inherent natural shrinking characteristics of the population was about to become evident. 4

5 Figure 3: Components of population balance in East and West Germany 1950 to persons : the Berlin w all is built 1989: the w all falls East to West net migration (balance of East) East to West net migration (balance of West) International migration balance (excluding east-w est-migration) Natural balance West Natural balance East Figure 3 shows the components of population balance in East and West Germany since the 1950s. In West Germany the natural balance became negative in This was however compensated by international migration gains. In the 1960s and 1970s workers from southern Europe and Turkey were recruited, as there was a shortage of labour. Recruitment was stopped in times of smaller economic crises in 1967 and after 1973, leading to temporary migration losses. As can be seen, at least since the 1970s migration gains are by far more important for the overall balance than births and deaths, but they also follow an oscillating and unsteady path. Since the late 1980s, migration seems no longer to be linked to economic cycles. It rather reflects changing political circumstances. Asylum seekers, refugees, many of them fled from the wars in former Yugoslavia, repatriation of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and continuing family reunions contributed to most of the early 1990s immigration. Today immigration to Germany is much more manifold than it was until the 1980s. After east to west migration had been practically stopped by the Berlin Wall and the fortified border for 28 years, East Germany experienced heavy migration losses in the years 1989 to Later in the 1990s, migration losses of East Germany now technically internal migration within the unified country became less important. They were exceeded by a death surplus in the second half of the 1990s, and in recent years both sources of decrease are on a similar (still negative) level. For both parts of the country this means that unless an unrealistic enormous increase in fertility can be realized, future demographic growth can only come from immigration. Variants of model calculations usually show that depending on the given number of immigrants only the point in time, when the population balance becomes negative, varies (Statistisches Bundesamt 2006; cf. Edmonston 2006 for a more formal demographic approach). 5

6 Aging While demographic shrinking becomes a relevant component of demographic change only in the long run, demographic aging is a more persistent trend and is in progress since decades. Although one might intuitively understand demographic aging, it is in fact a very complex process. Basically the mean age rises, and age composition changes. The share of younger people becomes smaller and at the same time the share of older people increases. Depending on what particular age groups are considered, there can be different answers to the question which population is "older" and how much aging is taking place at what pace. This paper concentrates on two age groups. Both of them are consumers of certain services, and both of them undergo substantial changes. First, the school-aged population (6 to 16 years, i.e. ages of compulsory school attendance) can of course directly be connected with the demand for schools. Six years after being born people enter the age group and ten years later they leave it. If migration and mortality are negligible, the development reflects just the number of births in the period of 16 to 6 years ago. Figure 4: school-aged population in East and West Germany 1990 to forecast 120 Index (1990=100) West East , born 1975 to , born 1980 to , born 1985 to , born 1990 to , born 1995 to , born 2000 to , born 2005 to , born 2010 to 2019 Figure 4 shows the relative development of this age group as a percentage of the age group's population stock in It reveals a distinctive east to west contrast. In the east, the collapse of the birth rate in the early 1990s can be easily retraced in the school-aged population, starting in the mid 1990s. The recovery of the birth rate in recent years eventually leads to a slight temporary increase, starting on a very low level. In 2025 there will be only half as many school-aged persons as there where in In the west the number of school-aged people increased by about 20% in the 1990s, but will again decrease in the next ten years. This hill is a so called echo effect of the 1960s' baby boom. Many people were in born in the 1960 s, hence many people were in the ages of founding families in the 1990s. As a result, many children 6

7 were born in the 1990s, although the average number of children per woman virtually did not change at all. The second age group considered are the high aged (80+ years). In this group health care and especially long-term care are of a particular importance, the latter partly performed within families, partly in institutions or nursing homes. Again, the births 80 years ago and earlier are a good starting point to understand the current and future number of the high aged people. Moreover, the development of this age group depends on the given and future mortality. Figure 5 shows the number of high aged people in East and West as a percentage of the age group's population stock in Figure 5: high aged population (80+) in East and West Germany 1990 to forecast 200 Index (1990=100) West East , born before , born before , born before , born before , born before , born before , born before , born before 1946 Unlike the younger population, the general path of development is very similar in East and West Germany. This is no big surprise. Almost all of the people considered were born in the same, then undivided country. Small birth cohorts of WW I and the early 1920s who are currently in this age are replaced by larger, i.e. "normal" ones of the 1930s, who reach the considered age in the future (Fig. 5, cf. also Fig.2). Most of the massive future increase of the number of high aged people is thus some kind of normalization. Reduced old-age mortality amplifies this development, but it is by far not its main cause. The stronger dynamics in the west by 2015 reflects the higher life expectancy in the west. Moreover, since retired people were to some extent allowed to move from east to west even in times of the closed borders, even smaller cohorts reached the age of 80 years in the east. In the long run, these east-west differences will vanish. In the last years of the forecast, after 2020, again small birth cohorts, born in the final stages of WW II and the first post-war years reach the age of 80 years and the number of high aged people stops growing for some years. Both age groups show a somewhat different development in the east and the west. Besides this crude but partly striking distinction, there are more specific 7

8 developments on the regional and local level, where supplying services of public interest become even more important. This will be discussed in the next chapter. The regional and small-scale level Although demographic change in the first place is an attribute of the entire population in Germany and in many other countries, there are strong differences concerning regions, cities and rural municipalities. Some characteristics are more prevalent in certain parts of the country than in others, and in some cases even opposing trends can occur. On a regional and small-scale level, demographic change becomes an essential framework for spatial planning and other fields of policy that take place on a local or regional level. Additionally, as on the national level, many features of demographic change can be related to other aspects beyond demography (in a narrower sense), topics usually studied within human geography and its large variety of related disciplines. This includes matters like regional labour markets, the housing markets, land use, infrastructure or, in a broader sense, local and regional living conditions. Changing population dynamics All cities and counties in Germany have a total fertility rate below the level of replacement. So in the long run the natural balance in all parts of the country will become negative. At most locally in a few municipalities exceptions might be found. Currently the overall trend for Germany and for many regions is a slow turnaround from natural growth to natural decrease. For a population that does not change its size on a big scale in a country, in theory there are two possibilities of what can happen to the population in the country's regions. All regions can show the same relative stability or, what is much more likely in practice, some regions will grow and some will shrink. In this context, regional and local population development is heavily modified by internal migration. But this is a zero-sum situation: if one gains, another loses. In other words: in a population that does not have natural growth any more, population gains are only possible at the expense of others. In a way the struggle for population has begun. In the 1990s this split dynamics was largely identical with an east-west-contrast. Most regions in West Germany experienced population gains while most regions of the east lost population. The collapse of the birth rate hit all parts of East Germany in a similar manner, and most of these regions had migration losses to the west, especially in the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The map (Fig. 6) shows this general contrast, as most shrinking municipalities in the past (blue on the map) are found in the east. In the west, only the old industrial core of the Ruhr and the Saarland and some remote rural parts, e.g. in northern Bavaria had lost population. These losses were still much smaller than the strong decline in most parts of East Germany. In addition to this large-scale contrast, a small-scale redistribution of population took place in the east due to emerging suburbanization. In East Germany under the socialist reign the housing market was tight, restricted and controlled by the 8

9 government. Many families lived in prefabricated large housing estates, often situated in inner cities. After the German reunification, an enormous backlog demand for single-family homes led to migration gains for some municipalities in the outskirts of urban areas, places that were in many cases only sparsely populated before. Furthermore, also for residents of West-Berlin low-cost suburban housing became available behind the former wall surrounding the city. Suburbanization peaked in the mid and late 1990s, when many East German cities experienced double losses. Besides the local movers to the suburban hinterland, there were still losses due to the economic gap between east and west. However, this migration stream has become far less important compared to the "exodus" in the years 1989 and Besides this local redistribution, the map shows that a change in population dynamics from growth in the past to decrease in the future will predominantly occur in the west. Most regions which in the past have had growth but are expected to face population losses in the future (purple coloured on the map) are found in the western part of the country. They are however adjacent to the east, to regions that are shrinking since the German unification. In the future this "triangle of demographic decline" moves west. It now comprises southern Lower Saxony, northern Hesse, the north-east of Bavaria and the Ruhr as its westernmost point. The slow change from growth to decrease on the national level has a counterpart in the regional population dynamics. Like in a domino effect more and more regions, counties and municipalities will change their position from demographic growth to stagnation and decrease. By the year 2025 only "islands" of demographic growth (red coloured on the map) will remain, most of them around economic centres in the south and the north-west such as Munich and Southern Bavaria, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and perhaps Cologne. 9

10 Figure 6: Change of small-scale population dynamics by 2025 The question of demographic growth depends more and more on migration gains. As international migration is very difficult to predict, the extent of this development is not very reliable. In the given forecast, the assumptions for international migration gains are based on a long-term average ignoring short-term up-and-downs. For regional and local population stocks, internal migration becomes an even more important factor for growth and decline. This means that the division between growing and shrinking municipalities shown in the map does not claim to be exact for the future. It provides an overall image that still has room for local special cases and exceptions, most of them based on small-scale migration. Only very few spots on the map fall in the category "decrease in the past, increase in the future" (orange-coloured). Most of them are some big cities including Berlin. This "change" is rather an expression of relative stability, as small losses in the past turn into small gains in the future. Again, the dependency on (forecasted) migration gains and losses make these results much less reliable than the general, large-scale picture. Although many people are interested in "reliable" forecasts for a specific city's population, it has to be said that there is no such thing. This clear declaration 10

11 can be misunderstood, as regionalized forecasts (including the one presented here) in fact provide data for individual cities and other small spatial units. However, the forecast can only be interpreted as a whole. Its results form some kind of mosaic, where some individual pieces can have odd or even "wrong" colours, but the overall picture is still clear. Beyond the strict but simple division between positive and negative population balance, figure 7 gives a more detailed impression of regional population dynamics in the past and in the future. The 1990s were years of bustling migration, especially in East Germany. In the future, a steadier and calmer development is expected, since most of the transformations in society and economy will have come to an end. This does not mean that changes have come to an end completely. In the east, demographic change enters its second generation. The strongest shrinking of more then 20% is expected to take place in remote rural areas, whereas bigger cities and their close neighbours in general only have slight decreases. As a result, in East Germany there will be a spatial concentration within a decreasing population. It should be noted that most of the future losses in East Germany are due to a surplus of deaths over births. Even if migration losses could be stopped, the general decline could only be slowed down but not reversed. In the west only a few regions can keep their past growth rates. Even for those municipalities that do not shrink in the future only small growth or a more or less stable population balance (yellow on the map) are expected. The "island"-character of the remaining growth regions becomes very clear, particularly if compared to their almost comprehensive extent in the past. A surplus of deaths will also be recorded in most regions in the west. In some places migration gains can compensate for this negative trend. This is not the case in the aforementioned "triangle of decline". However, the population losses in these areas of the west are still smaller than in most parts of the east. Yet, for most of them shrinking will be a new experience. This has to be mentioned, since for decades regional and local planning usually followed some kind of growth paradigm. But sooner or later a new awareness of changing demographic conditions has to be established. 11

12 Figure 7: Recent and future population dynamics Figure 8 gives a summary of regional population dynamics from German unification to the year It shows the relative development in urban, rural and suburban categories of counties in east and west, displayed as a percentage of the population stock in 2005, the base year of the forecast calculations. For the west most of the growth in the past, especially in the early 1990s, took place outside the cities. Unlike in the east, there is no real difference between rural and suburban counties. In the future the contrasts between cities and suburban to rural places are even smaller. The map (fig.7) shows that the actual development is much patchier, and rather the large-scale situation than the small-scale level of urbanization matters. 12

13 Figure 8: population dynamics in urban, suburban and rural counties Index (2005 = 100) Cities w est Suburban w est Rural w est Cities east Suburban east Rural east West total East total For East Germany, in the first three years covered, there were losses in all three categories. Then, in the 1990s the suburban areas experienced population gains that peaked in In the first years of the 21st century and in the future cities and suburban counties share a similar, yet decreasing development. Their decline is however not as extreme as the rural counties. They were the spatial category with the highest losses since 1990 and in the future they will lose another 20 percent of their current population. Aging Basically, demographic ageing takes place everywhere in the country. The general path of development for two age groups undergoing strong changes has been discussed in a previous chapter. For the school aged population a distinct east-west contrast was revealed, while for the high aged people a similar development in east and west became clear. Are there regions and places within the west or within the east that are affected by these trends more than others? Figure 9 gives an answer to this question. However, it needs some explanation. 13

14 Fig 9: Future dynamics of school-aged and high-aged population A future decline in school population by one fifth is expected for Germany as a whole until Additionally, there are systematic regional differences that are related to urban, suburban and rural categories. The smallest decrease in the number of students will be found in the core cities, some cities may even face slight increases. Also the suburban hinterland of some cities benefits from in-migration of families and shows only modest decreases. The strongest decline in school population (more than one quarter of today's stock) is expected to take place in rural areas, particularly in remote and sparsely populated regions. In the future this holds for east and west in a similar manner. But as can be easily deduced from figure 4, for the west this is a new experience, while for East Germany most of the decline in school population already has taken place. For the planning of schools and related matters, such as public transport or school buses, this leads to a specific need for adjustment. Securing carrying capacities and economic sustainability was a major task for planning in East Germany and is a forthcoming task in many regions of the west. The relative increase in the number of older people is even bigger than the relative decrease in the number of young ones. The basic process has been described in the previous chapter. Figure 9 reveals that in all parts of Germany the number of the high aged will grow by at least one third, but for many regions much higher rates are expected. In some regions, there will be twice as many 80+ years old people in 2025 than today. In most cases regional aging due to the increase of the number of old people means "aging in place". Unlike in some other countries, migration of older people does not 14

15 contribute very much to changes in the age composition of larger regions. Only locally, on a very small scale, retirement migration can have a considerable impact. The low spatial mobility makes the prediction of the number of older people a more reliable part of the forecast. Knowing the number of 60+ years old people today, it is eventually mortality which determines how many 80+years old people will be living in a certain region 20 years later. Two types of region can be identified, where this aspect of demographic aging will be really massive (Swiaczny et al. 2008). First, the stronger relative increase since about 2005 in East Germany already shown in figure 5 again can be seen in most regions, especially in remote and sparsely populated rural areas. In the west the regional situation is much more distinctive. It is a result of former internal migration. However, this migration took place when the people considered belonged to younger age groups. They were in fact the parent generation of families that moved from cities to suburban communities. A highly positive migration balance of a birth cohort and a subsequent low mobility of people in this age group are responsible for a high impact of the aging-in-place process in a region, as explained above. A region with a large positive migration balance in the past and low mobility of these people afterwards will hence age in place. This is in particular related to the suburbanization which has taken place since the 1960s in the western part of Germany. In the west the highest rates of growth of the high aged people in figure 7 are found almost exclusively in counties surrounding the core cities (Swiaczny et al. 2008). The young families of the suburbanization in the 1960s and 1970s have become older. The children usually have moved out and founded their own households, while the parents remained. As a result, neighbourhoods of single family homes, originally designed for families with children, are now and in the forthcoming future increasingly inhabited by old couples and old widows. For many suburban municipalities this is an unprecedented situation. Basically it means that people with presumably a lower daily mobility tend to live more and more in places where longer distances have to be overcome. This process is also expected to have an effect on the urban and suburban housing market, when eventually the old people have to give up their own household. Most people stay in their homes as long as possible, particularly in owner occupied homes that they have built with their own hands (or at least their own money). But sooner or later there will be an increasing offer of vacant houses from the early suburban period. This is sometimes considered a chance to stop urban sprawl, especially since the intrinsic demand for family housing will decrease (due to demographic change, again!) and these homes are situated closer to the central cities than newly built ones on the edges of suburban fringes. Looking at demographic aging in regional categories of urbanization generally reveals a reversal of former patterns of age composition (Fig.10). Around 1990, not only the population in the east was "younger" than in the west. Moreover in the west the cities had an "older" population than the suburban and rural areas. They had both a lower share of younger age groups and a higher share of older people. During the late 1990s and the forthcoming decades this situation is changing. Particularly in rural and suburban counties the number of younger people goes down, whereas in the cities only a slight decrease in this age group is about to happen. In the last years of 15

16 the forecast, the share of under 20 years old in the countryside will be on the same level as in the cities. This shows again that the component of aging predominantly is taking place outside the cities (cf. fig. 9). Cities (in the west) are affected by aging in a less direct way. For the 60+ years old an increase takes place everywhere, but again in the cities the pace of demographic aging is slower. This also contributes to a reversal of age compositions. In 1990 the cities in West Germany had the highest share of older people. But by 2010 they will be the category with the smallest share. In the east, there is also a reversal of the share of under 20 years old people. About in 2010 the cities will surpass the rural regions. However this process happens within a specific path of development that covers all parts of East Germany and has been explained before. It also has to be considered that all Berlin is included in the category of East German cities. Since the demographic upheavals of East Germany did not apply to West Berlin, the city in total follows a more western type of development. The data and forecast provided here do not show how demographic change will be present within different parts of the cities. Compared to rural and suburban areas, cities usually have a highly complex structure full of economic, social and other contrasts like ethnical segregation. Of course this also applies to demographic characteristics, making a uniform statement impossible. The most reliable predictions of demographic change in this context can be given for de facto suburban neighbourhoods, many of them built and populated in the 1960s. They later became incorporated into the bigger cities, or they were already situated within city boundaries. For these quarters the central points about "aging in place" in suburban counties (fig. 9 and 10) should also be applicable. 16

17 Figure 10: Demographic aging in urban, suburban and rural counties Share of young people percentage of under 20 years old persons forecast Cities w est Suburban w est Rural w est Cities east Suburban east Rural east Share of older people percentage of 60+ years old persons Cities w est Suburban w est Rural w est Cities east Suburban east Rural east forecast

18 Synopsis A visual summary of future demographic development in Germany's regions is given in Figure 11. The map shows which components of demographic change are regionally most important and where different components overlap. Three major aspects of population dynamics, demographic aging and internationalization have been selected for this map. Such an approach is consistent with the character of the forecast. Instead of formally "exact" quantitative results, rather qualitative spatial trends and tendencies are displayed and related to their regional prevalence. Fig 11: Future regional demographic development a synopsis The split dynamics of population with increases in the south and the northwest and at the fringes of urban areas is also a fundamental condition for demographic aging. In most growing regions the decrease in younger age groups is less relevant, and aging takes place rather due to the increase in the number of old people. In most shrinking regions on the other hand a decrease in school-aged population is expected. If additionally the number of high aged people increases, demographic upheavals are even more massive. This constellation applies to large parts of rural areas in the East. Here the components of demographic change - with the exception of internationalization - accumulate in their clearest manifestations. 18

19 Furthermore, the map provides an image of the regional distribution of international migration. Like in the past immigration mostly affects bigger cities in West Germany. Moreover, in the south and west also smaller cities and urbanized districts in large metropolitan areas undergo a considerable internationalization. New immigrants tend to live close to former immigrants. This holds of course especially for family reunions and other forms of chain migration. As a result, spatial distribution of international migration very often follows some kind of self-energizing feedback loop. In the 1990s the repatriation of ethnic Germans followed a different pattern. Most of these immigrants were distributed via predetermined rates among the federal states. In some cases regions outside the big metropolitan areas received a considerable number of immigrants. In East Germany internationalization is far less prominent, although some bigger cities modestly partake in immigration. Again, the special case of Berlin has to be noted, the western part of the city of course belonging to the western world before 1990 and thus having a "western" type of immigration history. As it can be seen, in many cases the "white spots" on the map, i.e. places where no significant demographic aging and no considerable shrinking (or growth) take place, are just the big core cities, where internationalization has its most striking impact. This is no accidental coincidence. It reveals again that aging and shrinking is counteracted only by immigration, a situation that determines especially the demographic future of many cities. The map shows that there is shrinking (of younger age groups) in growing regions as well as there is growth of other groups like older people and immigrants in shrinking regions. Shrinking does not mean that every type of demand for services, housing etc. will become smaller. Although most parts of the country are affected by demographic change, there is no overall occurrence of all of its components. They are as manifold as the regions' initial situations, and there is no all-purpose strategy to deal with these individual paths of demographic development, many of them unprecedented. 19

20 References Bucher, Hansjörg; Schlömer, Claus, 2006: Die neue Raumordnungsprognose des BBR. In: Raumforschung und Raumordnung 63: Bucher, Hansjörg; Schlömer, Claus, 2008: Raumordnungsprognose BBR-Berichte Kompakt 2/2008. Bonn. Bucher, Hansjörg; Schlömer, Claus, 2009: Raumordnungsprognose 2025/2050. Berichte 29. Bonn. Coleman, David, 2007: The future of the developed world: some neglected demographic challenges. In: Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft 32: Edmonston, Barry, 2006: Population dynamics in Germany. The role of immigration and population momentum. In: Population Research and Policy Review 25: Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR) / Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS) (eds.), 2006a: Perspectives of Spatial Development in Germany. Bonn / Berlin. Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR), 2006b: Research News No 1 / April ( 1,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/2006_1.pdf) Frejka, Tomas, Sobotka, Tomáš; Hoem, Jan M.; Toulemon, Laurent (Eds.), 2008: Childbearing trends and policies in Europe. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock. (Demographic research: special collection 7). Gans, Paul; Kemper, Franz-Josef, 2002: Urbanization in Germany Before and After Unification. In: Geyer, Henry S. (ed.): International Hand-Book of Urban Systems. Cheltenham/Northampton: Kemper, Franz-Josef, 2004a: Internal Migration in Eastern and Western Germany. Convergence or divergence of spatial trends after unification? In: Regional Studies 38: Korcz, Richard; Schlömer, Claus, 2008: Perspektiven internationaler Wanderung und demographische Heterogenisierung in den Regionen Deutschlands. In: Informationen zur Raumentwicklung 3-4/2008: Mai, Ralf et al., 2007: Regionale Alterung in Deutschland unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Binnenwanderung. Materialien zur Bevölkerungswissenschaft Vol. 120, Wiesbaden. Schlömer, Claus, 2004: Binnenwanderung seit der deutschen Einigung. In: Raumforschung und Raumordnung 62: Schlömer, Claus, 2009: Binnenwanderungen in Deutschland zwischen Konsolidierung und neuen Paradigmen. Makroanalytische Untersuchungen zur Systematik von Wanderungsverflechtungen. Bonn. (forthcoming) Swiaczny, Frank; Graze, Philip; Schlömer, Claus, 2008: Spatial Impacts of Demographic Change in Germany. Urban Population Processes Reconsidered. In: Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft 33: Statistisches Bundesamt 2006: 11. Koordinierte Bevölkerungsvorausberechnung. Wiesbaden United Nations (UN), Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2009: World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. New York. 20