A Bosch study reports: More people want children than are having children

Stuttgart, June 28, 2006. In Germany, one in four men and one in seven women (but only one in seventeen in former East Germany) want to remain childless. On average, men want to have only 1.59 children, while women want 1.75. No other country in Europe has a lower figure. The number of children actually born (1.37 children per woman) is even lower than the number of children people want. This is the finding of a joint study by the German Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) and Robert Bosch Stiftung. In 2005, 10,000 people in Germany were interviewed about their attitudes to children, the status of families, and their expectations of the government’s family policies.