May 12, 2025 | News | Recommended Reading

Birth Seasonality: Eastern Germany Realigns With the West After Reunification

There are times of the year when more children are born than usual. In his latest publication, Risto Conte Keivabu, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), examines how the seasonal distribution of births in East and West Germany has changed between 1946 and 2017, and whether German reunification was associated with a change in the seasonality of births.

© MPIDR

He used data from the Human Fertility Database (HFD). The researcher found that the distribution of births has changed over time. In the earlier period (1946-1970s), births peaked in the spring. In the later period (after 1970) the peak shifted to late summer. However, this change in seasonality first occurred in West Germany in the 1970s and only after reunification (of East and West Germany) in the 1990s in East Germany. After 1990, the decline in birth rates in the first months of the year was more pronounced in both East and West Germany than in the period before unification (1980-1989).

"The different fertility trends in eastern and western Germany and their convergence after unification provide further evidence of how societal changes might influence fertility decisions," says Risto Conte Keivabu.

Original Publication

Risto Conte Keivabu: Changes in Birth Seasonality in East and West Germany, 1946-2017 in Comparative Population Studies (2025); DOI: 10.12765/CPoS-2025-04

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