European birth rates

The rabenmutter complex helps explain why Germany has had Europe's lowest birthrate for the past three decades and why a record high 30 percent of German women will never have children.

Germany is in the throes of a baby bust. Since the mid-1960s, each new generation of Germans has been a third smaller than that of its parents. If the trend continues, Germany's population will shrink from 83 million today to about 79 million in 2050.

At the same time, the number of retirees is ballooning. By 2020, 30 percent of the German population will be 60 or older. Who will fund their pensions? The ratio of workers paying into the pension system and those receiving a pension is now 2-1; in a decade it will be 1-1.

Germany is hardly alone. All across Europe, birthrates (the number of births per 1,000 of population) and fertility rates (the number of births per woman of child-bearing age) have been in a long, steep decline.