00:04 NARRATOR:
Germany is shrinking. Millions of apartments stand vacant and must be torn down because the next generation of tenants is missing. At the same time, the numbers of the aged and elderly are rising. All across Europe. Though there are major differences: In France or Sweden, for example, distinctly more babies are being born. How are those families getting along in these countries? Are the child-care services better? Are the tax allowances for children larger? Is politics able to have any influence at all on whether people want to have children?
00:48 NARRATOR:
Over the past ten years, the city of Halle has lost a third of its population. No isolated case among large cities in eastern Germany. Housing-development companies have begun tearing down whole blocks of high-rises in response. By 2010, twenty thousand apartments are supposed to be demolished in Halle alone.
01:07 FRANK SYDOW (Housing cooperative "Merry Future"):
Original voice: German
What's currently going on there is a huge program. Around one thousand to twelve hundred apartments vanish in Halle each year. They're torn down. It's been evolving gradually since 2000, but now everyone has formed a united front against this surplus of housing units. They are tearing down this massive supply of vacant inventories. Our properties distinguish themselves by the fact that unfortunately - you really have to say unfortunately - all of our housing inventories had already been refurbished with new windows back in the nineties. Which means they were as good as brand-new. In compliance with the new regulations, thermal insulation. We had already repaired all the roofs. Sadly, now even properties like that are being surrendered to demolition. (INTERVIEWER: Due to a lack of tenants?) Because the tenants just aren't there, that's exactly why.
02:36 NARRATOR:
"Silberhöhe" used to be one of the model satellite towns in former East Germany. Ten years ago, forty thousand people still lived here. Today, less than half of that. In the center of the community: one street of shops. The last shopkeepers have no rosy hopes about the future.
02:50 WOMAN SHOPKEEPER:
Original voice: German
There were so many shops on this street, and now you see what's left: absolutely nothing. It's all dying out.
02:58 WOMAN SHOPKEEPER:
Original voice: German
People used to take walks along here. They went window-shopping and then came in the next day. Nowadays there's nothing to attract anyone to this shopping street anymore. Not for a stroll or to look.
03:11 NARRATOR:
The leading cause of shrinkage in eastern Germany is no longer that the people moved away. Meanwhile it's because the number of children is too low. A downward spiral that reinforces itself, because fewer children also means that the parents of tomorrow are missing.
03:24 WALTER PRIGGE (Member of the board of trustees of "Shrinking Cities"):
Original voice: German
After re-unification in 1989, not enough children were "produced", so to speak. So the big kink from that birth rate is going to come in about 2010, 2015. That means at the moment we've got one million, three hundred thousand vacant apartments, and we're going to have another million standing empty in around 2010, 2015. Then things are really going to get tough. At some point the critical mass for a shopping mall won't exist anymore in this region. At some point the critical mass to have streetcars running won't exist anymore. That means everything is shrinking, everything's moving back to the inner city. In twenty, thirty years you can reckon with these towns simply not being there anymore.
04:05 NARRATOR:
The radical changes during re-unification unsettled people in former East Germany to such a degree that the number of children sank by almost seventy percent. Permanently. The consequence: Most of the child day-care centers had to close. Here a typical dual-purpose facility: day nursery and kindergarten in one.
04:23 STEFFI QUATEMBER (from "Knirpsenland" child day-care center):
Original voice: German
According to my information, twenty-one combined facilities like ours used to exist. Both before and after the period when re-unification was going on. Now four of these combined facilities still exist. That's how far the number of children has fallen.
04:39 NARRATOR:
Shrinkage has changed the social fabric, too.
04:43 SILKE MEIER:
Original voice: German
This area's already become a bit like a poor people's neighborhood. When it was still East Germany, it used to be that anyone with a brand-new apartment was someone special. Now it's become just the opposite. I think everybody here is a little worried that this is going to become the "ghetto" district, and in a way, it already has. In fact, we're actually the only family here in our building. I find that a bit depressing. When you only have two tenants left in the whole building, that's not pleasant. But that's the way it is.
05:15 NARRATOR:
The Erich Kästner School in the same district of Halle. The few schoolchildren in the vast schoolyard are a marked contrast to ten years ago, when it was packed during the breaks.
05:28 JÜRGEN KNEISL (Principal of the school):
Original voice: German
We simply don't have enough kids here. It was around five years ago that the number of pupils began to reduce rapidly here in the newly built areas. That brought the question of what's going to happen to the schools. We all had to get used to the idea first. Now we're among the last to be closed. As of 2006, the only thing left in the area with new housing is going to be one secondary school. Originally there were a total of thirteen schools. And in the end, one is all that's left. In other words, some have been closed for a while. The first of them have already been torn down.
05:58 WALTER PRIGGE:
Original voice: German
We don't know what we're supposed to do here. The area will be grassed over. But that's about it. Maybe they'll plant a few trees, but that's all. There just aren't any concepts.
06:08 NARRATOR:
The population in the western Ruhr region, where most of the coal mines have shut down, is also shrinking. Not as fast as in the east, but it's been going on for thirty years. Mailman Uwe Flegel from Gelsenkirchen:
06:19 UWE FLEGEL (Mailman):
Original voice: German
It's gotten worse over the years. I've been doing this job for almost forty years. It's really bad. I deliver mail to round about sixteen hundred households, and when I see all these apartments, I'd say there's definitely a vacancy in every second or third building. What with everybody moving out, there are hardly any buildings in this neighborhood where the situation is constant and I could say it will stay that way. And it's getting worse all the time.
06:48 PROFESSOR VOLKER EICHENER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
What we really need is an urban redevelopment of Germany, because today overcapacity situations of vacant apartments are emerging in both the east and the west. The city of Wuppertal, for example, already has a vacancy rate of over six percent. That's equivalent to East-German conditions. We've extrapolated projected figures for several towns in the Ruhr region going up to 2015. In the city of Gelsenkirchen, for instance, we determined that we'll have an excess of seven thousand apartments; in Essen, as many as twenty to thirty thousand. That will lead to slum manifestations in the affected neighborhoods. The apartments stand empty, they get boarded up or occupied by squatters, they fall into disrepair. There won't be enough buyers for the shops anymore. They'll close up. That means we'll have no other choice than to demolish housing, too. In some towns, the first demolition projects are encountering immediate resistance from both politicians and the general populace. Naturally we have to get used to the idea first. But if we do things like they did in towns in the new federal states in the east, where they waited so long until they had ten to fifteen thousand housing units standing vacant, then that's going to be very difficult to manage. We really have to start right away, because if we want to tear down housing inventories in five years, we have to know now which ones those are going to be.
08:20 NARRATOR:
Coal mines and steel foundries have been closing down in the coal-producing area of northern France, too. But in contrast to the Ruhr region, there's no lack of coming generations in this North French crisis zone. It's just the opposite: The hospitals' maternity wards are reporting a real baby boom. France's birth rate has been well ahead of Germany's for decades. Here in the north of France the women are having even more babies than the French national average: exactly two babies per woman. But why are the French more fertile?
08:55 NARRATOR:
The Hôtel de Ville in Paris, city hall and administrative seat. And a child day-care center as well. A very special one. It was set up in the former private residence of Jacques Chirac, a political signal from his successor, Bertrand Delanoë, the incumbent mayor of Paris. A good way to score points with voters: Even though France has three times the nursery capacity of Germany, finding a spot for your child here in Paris has become a challenge. The reason: In more and more cases, both parents work, and French parents rely on the quality of care and supervision at state-run nurseries.
09:31 DOMINIQUE LAPLACE (father):
Original voice: French
We both work, and our daughter is well looked-after here. She's developing faster than if she were always at home.
09:41 MOTHER:
Original voice: French
It was important to me that she gets together with other children so that she can develop.
09:51 THOMAS BRIQUET (father):
Original voice: French
She's adapted very well here. She's content, though it was more difficult than it was for the other children. Most of them were already being brought here when they were five months old. Emma was older, eleven months, and she was already pretty accustomed to me. Of course, that was the same for me, but in the end everything worked out just fine.
10:19 NARRATOR:
The government's pro-child policy has a military dimension. Marshal Pétain announced France's surrender to Hitler's Germany in World War II with the words: "Not enough children, not enough arms, not enough allies. They've defeated us!"
10:36 NARRATOR:
At the victory parade in Paris after war ended in 1945, Charles de Gaulle made raising the birth rate a national priority. He proclaimed that "France needs twelve million babies!" and proceeded to create a comprehensive child-care network. By 1960, de Gaulle's goal had actually been achieved. Twelve million babies had been born.
10:58 PROFESSOR HERWIG BIRG (University of Bielefeld):
Original voice: German
France has made it an official goal to keep its population as high as possible in order to catch up with Germany. It was always a government target that was spoken about quite openly. Long before re-unification, the national demographic institute in Paris had calculated the point when Germany would probably be overtaken. The fact is that it's happened. France has a higher birth rate than Germany, even though Germany has twenty million more people. It would be unthinkable for politicians in Germany to pursue a goal of catching up with some country demographically, or trying to overtake it. That kind of thinking is so alien to us after the Second World War. Of course, before the war or during it, it was a different story.
11:48 NARRATOR:
The National Socialists assigned women the role of keeping house. Hitler praised German mothers as the "source of the nation" and as "forerunners of victory". Women with an abundance of children were awarded the "Mother's Cross", even retroactively. Ironically, the same type of award for mothers exists in France, too. It has been presented by the president once a year since 1920. But it doesn't bring back bad memories there.
12:16 NARRATOR:
The first postwar chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, dispensed with demographic policies of any kind as being all too reminiscent of the Nazi past. In his opinion, "people have children, whether they want to or not". None of his successors wanted to hear about the topic, either, not even when the number of children began to fall dramatically in 1970. Even today the effects of post-war history are still felt: Child care has evolved very differently in the two countries. Two French women who married Germans know the difference as a result of their own experiences.
12:55 SYLVIE LEFÈVRE (mother):
Original voice: French
My sons Julien and Tom had just turned one. I went running all over the place trying to find a nursery for them, but there just wasn't any room anywhere. Once they turn three it's going to remain difficult, because most of the day-care centers here are not open all day. As a mother in Germany you can only work till noon, then you have to pick up the kids. That means if you're a woman and you have children, then you can't have a career in Germany. I'd like to go back to work, but I can't find any day care for them, so I can't have a job.
13:31 ODILE FICKUS EISENECKER (mother):
I worked in France when Bastien was still tiny, only nine months old. I had a woman who minded the child. Everything was working out fine, no problems. But then I came to Germany, and things are completely different here. Changing from one system to the other was really hard. Like many other French women, I had always been able to combine a job and kids well, partly because the government offers financial support. But here there's nothing at all for toddlers under three. No slots in the nurseries, and the child minders are incredibly expensive, and not trained, either. Then there's the social pressure: A good mother doesn't put a little child into any kind of day care. It's quite different in France. People trust the institutions there.
14:25 PROFESSORJEANNE FAGNANI (University of Paris):
Original voice: French
The countries in Europe where fertility is the highest are the same countries that give women the most help toward rejoining the workforce, and the ones that subsidize child day care. On the other hand, the countries that don't help women when they want to work, like Italy, Spain or Germany, they show a very, very low fecundity.
14:53 NARRATOR:
Women who go to work have more children. That formula applies in Sweden as well. Although the government there has not set its sights so highly on the number of children, it has on equal rights for women. The result ends up being the same.
15:06 ULRICA STEENBECK (Mother):
Original voice: German
I have to be able to work, but of course I also want to have kids. It's very important to me to be able to combine the two. When you have a child in Sweden, you can stay home for one year, or even longer, and you still receive eighty percent of your most recent gross salary.
15:27 NARRATOR:
Paid leave for new parents at eighty percent of their salaries. The Swedish government is generous here. But that money is paid out in full only when both parents take time out to rear the child. When they do it is up to them.
15:44 CARL-PETTER THORWALDSSON (Swedish parliamentary commission for parental leave): Original voice: English
"Parental leave is very flexible. You can take mothers, you can take fathers, you can take 3 days a week, you can take half a day and its from they are born till they are 8 years old. So it's really a flexible benefit, and very popular."
16:02 ULRICA STEENBECK (Mother):
Original voice: German
I think that's the difference here in Sweden. It's not taken for granted that husbands always go to work and don't stay at home. When people have children here, it's quite normal for the father to say: OK, I want to stay home, too.
16:21 RONNY WIKSTRÖM (Father): Original voice: English
„If I don't work at all for 9 months, nothing will
happen in 9 months. So the pen will be very left after 9 months, of course. And then you can really loose momentum. But it works, of course. Anything will work." (Frage: And it's a chance to rethink.) "You mean for research? I don't have the time to rethink, though. I am constantly cooking, so I have no time for thinking. No, I try to that kind of work I can do late night, I try to keep up a little bit. But it doesn't work that well. I thought it would have worked better. But it doesn't. One child takes a lot of time and 2 children are really, really full time. Its never more than after I am finished from cleaning after one meal its never more than 45 minutes until I have to start thinking about the next one."
17:10 NARRATOR:
Ronny Wikström pays a brief visit to a neighbor before he picks up his second child from kindergarten. The neighbor also happens to be on paternity leave.
17:23 ROB GALWAY (Neighbor): Original voice: English
"It's a fantastic opportunity. I'm Irish originally.
There is nothing like this in Ireland." (Frage: I wonder.) "You have to take unpaid leave."
17:30 RONNY WIKSTRÖM (Father) (approx. time code): Original voice:
English
"I don't think that you really cause an irreparable
damage in the relationship if you don't stay home. Not from the child's perspective. Yes, I think, when they 2 or 3 years old I don't think they remember it. But I think, the connection will probably be more from the parents side. Because I think if you stay home for a long time, you really get connected more to the child and you get to learn them better. I think the main difference in staying home is that the one that is really at home is the one that is responsible for the child. Now we are the ones who know if they are eating, what have they been eating last week and how are they. And that, I never thought about that before I had it already done but that makes a lot of difference in the way you feel about them. And being a parent. If you stay for one day, and he doesn't eat or she doesn't eat, you know, it will get fixed tomorrow."
18:25 NARRATOR:
One third of the fathers in Sweden take paternity leave, more than seven times as many as in Germany.
18:38 CARL-PETTER THORWALDSSON (Swedish parliamentary commission for parental leave: Original voice: English
"Every 5th day is taken by father and of course this
is very important. Its important for many reasons. We see also for almost 40% of marriages in Europe and also on Sweden are ending up in divorces. And we also see a very good connection between these fathers who are staying home much the first year and they will also end up with have a good contact with the children after divorces, so its very important for the child even up to 20 years old its very important."
19:10 NARRATOR:
Divorces are just as frequent in Germany, yet one out of four women here decides resolutely against having a child; more than in any other country in the world. In the case of university graduates, nearly half remain childless. What's the reason for this? We ask three women around the age of forty why they decided not to have children:
19:26 ISABELLA ARCHAN and DANIELA LEBANG:
Original voice: German
Somehow you get along just as well without a child. I often have the feeling that I'm not really missing out on anything, because nowadays a woman's goal in life is no longer necessarily to have a husband and child, or several children. I also always had the uncertainty whether a relationship was going to last or not, because I think that relationships these days fluctuate faster. When you get to know someone, even if you marry, there's no guarantee that the marriage is going to last forty or fifty years. And I think that's just fine. If a relationship is not working out, the sooner you split up, the better. But that also means that you're left there alone with a child, because in most cases the child is left with the mother. That's not what I really want. I don't want to stay home all the time and be a mother. I can't imagine that for myself.
20:11 (?) RENATE WEISSFLOCH (approx. time code):
Original voice: German
It's really true that relationships break up more easily nowadays. In my case, what I thought I wanted first of all as the starting point was a stable, harmonious relationship. My attitude stayed like that for quite a while, and now the time for that is over and done with.
20:27 NARRATOR:
Moral pressure has a harmful effect thereby. One sees the most children in countries where relationships without a marriage license are tolerated. In Sweden and France, for example, these days unwed mothers give birth to more than half the children. On the other hand, one sees the least children where single mothers receive little respect. In Italy, for example, where strict Catholicism prevails, merely every tenth child comes from an unwed mother.
Here in the center of ancient Rome, directly adjoining the Forum Romana, are the law offices of career attorney Tania Papa. For her too, the only way she can imagine having children is within a marriage.
21:11 TANIA PAPA (Attorrney-at-law): Original voice: Italian
It's not that I didn't want to have kids at all. I hope that I might still meet a man with whom I can have children. But apparently I've taken too long getting around to it. I'm thirty-nine years old, an age where certain decisions should already have been made. In my case, although I had a very long relationship with someone, I unfortunately didn't think about having children. Then that relationship fell apart, and presumably that decided the question of children for me at the same time. The point is less whether you want to have children or not: The point is much more the fact that women have discovered their economic independence and their will to assert themselves in the working world. And if that's the decision you make, then you'll just have to make do without children.
22:00 NARRATOR:
The fact is that Italian women continue to be strongly family-oriented, but they are often left alone with the task of raising a child.
22:11 PROFESSOR KLAUS PETER STROHMEIER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
With us, the characteristic form of families has become increasing and widespread childlessness, especially for those age groups who are now young adults. The widespread form in Italy is the one-child family. The case is similar in Spain and Greece. That means the policy for families has not developed much at all there. It displays little transparency. For those with families, it's not so easy to find out what benefits they're even entitled to. Few husbands are cooperative. Italian husbands involve themself with the household one hour a week, the French fourteen hours, the Germans ten. French husbands probably cook more often than Germans, but with one hour for Italians they're not very cooperative. In the case of Italian wives, the incentive system in this situation is quite clear: With few husbands cooperating, little political support for families and a desire to be gainfully employed on their own, they agree to have one child.
23:00 NARRATOR:
Antonella Dentamaro also has only one child. And she feels one is enough. After all, there are more than enough people to spare. Italy is overpopulated, and the demands on parents have grown.
23:14 ANTONELLA DENTAMARO (Mother): Original voice: English
"In Italy if you want to have a good kindergarden you have to pay it. There is no system of support for family with children. A child deserves everything we can do or give them. There is a swimming pool or the dance course or the English course. To have a child that also means to try to give him every kind of sport and tools and instruments to grow up safely and smartly possibly. So this is why I think the Italian family winds up also and decided to have only one or two children."
24:00 NARRATOR:
Antonella's son obviously likes the dance course. The widespread one-child family has led to about the same lack of children in Italy and Spain these days as already encountered in Germany: one point three children per woman in the midst of a downward trend.
24:20 NARRATOR:
Though exceptions do exist: For example, Laer. On a German national scale, this town of three thousand not far from the city of Münster is among the leaders in terms of statistics for children. The prolific climate has even been scientifically researched. How did it happen? We ask the mayor, a member of Germany's Green party. He has just been re-elected, with seventy-eight percent of the vote.
24:42 HANS-JÜRGEN SCHIMKE (Mayor of Laer): Original voice: German
When making the decision for a second child, parents tell us that in some cases it's a big help when you already know the local child-care options and can plan accordingly. The figures actually show that the birth rate rose steeply in the mid-1990s, running about parallel with what was offered in child-care facilities. During the past few years the community coupled the zoning development of a new area for construction with a new kindergarten. That was supplemented by intensive support for the all-day elementary school. That means we are now in a position to say that we can offer an unbroken chain of child care for children from six months to ten years of age. And we're getting very positive feedback from the parents.
25:17 NARRATOR:
All-day schools are standard fare in many other countries. But in Germany, Laer's school system is the exception to the rule. Only five percent of Germany's schools have afternoon child care.
25:27 SCHOOLBOY: Original voice: German
(INTERVIEWER: Would you rather be at home?) Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For instance, when Hannes or Lukas are there, then I'd rather be in the lunchtime day-care group, because at home I'd have to clean up my room. Then I can't play with the others.
25:42 SCHOOLGIRL 1: Original voice: German
I've liked it here up till now. (INTERVIEWER: And what's better here than at home?) At home there's no one to play with. I always have to go up to my room because Miriam has to do the cleaning. I'm not supposed to be downstairs. I'm supposed to paint up in my room or something like that.
26:06 SCHOOLGIRL 2: Original voice: German
I think it's very, very good here. (INTERVIEWER: And what do you do in the afternoon?) Play games, listen to music and do homework.
26:18 INGE BEHLER (Spokeswoman, Laer all-day school):
Original voice: German
It's quite natural that the parents were interested in knowing that their child is being supervised all day. That goes for infants starting at three months old right up to fourth grade. The politicians in office saw the need the same way due to the political situation in Laer. Our mayor belongs to the Green party. The Christian Democratic Union party didn't agree with that at all at first, or they didn't see any necessity for it. On the other hand, the women in the "CDU" had a completely different view when the topic came up on a committee agenda. Those women all shared the opinion that an institution like this simply ought to be created here, too.
27:10 DERYA MOHR (Mother):
Original voice: German
I couldn't work if these possibilities for supervision didn't exist in Laer. On the one hand there are these facilities for the little one and for my son. He stays with the afternoon day care at the all-day school. I'm very happy he can, because without those options work wouldn't be possible. We worked in Münster. I think it's a completely different situation there. We had considerable difficulties finding something back then when our son was two years old. Though the real problem started when the child began attending school. Laer showed a great deal of commitment with the all-day school. Like I said, if that hadn't been there, then I couldn't have gone on working.
27:58 MEIKE RITTER (Mother):
Original voice: German
I'm a flight attendant. I'm home a lot, but when I'm gone, then I'm really gone. That means three to five days, so naturally I need some kind of child care during the daytime. We started to look around in Münster, but the child day-care situation there is much more difficult. We moved here four years ago, and I was immediately assigned a full-day spot in the nursery school, as well as day-care supervision for schoolchildren. That was all being offered at the time, so we moved here explicitly for that reason. Laer was the only place where we still looked for a house.
28:39 NARRATOR:
Interestingly enough, the UN had just honored Münster as a city especially friendly to children. Yet apparently the topic of daily child care hadn't played any role thereby. At nearly two point five children per woman, the birth rate in Laer is one of the highest in Germany. But even if the rest of the country were to follow Laer's example, that could no longer prevent the population from shrinking. Politicians have ignored the low figures for children for too long.
29:06 PROFESSOR VOLKER EICHENER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
It's too late for political measures for families because the baby-boom age groups have grown beyond the age for becoming parents. The generation of parents that has now followed them is much too small to keep pace. The population would continue to shrink even if we doubled the current birth rate of one point four children per woman because we don't have enough parents anymore. In terms of family policy, perhaps something could have been done in the 1980s and 1990s. But now it's too late.
29:38 NARRATOR:
Children are a source of wealth that can rapidly slip away. Even as late as 1932, the town of Borkel in the Eifel region was still prized as the "village with the most children in Prussia". Today two adolescents are all that's left in this town with a population of one hundred. According to Josef and Paula Behrens, the playground isn't needed anymore. He is eighty-seven years old. She is eighty-four.
30:00 JOSEF BEHRENS:
Original voice: German
Things used to be different from what they are today. There used to be lots of kids here. Today there are none left. Borler used to be the village with the most children in Germany. Today nothing. But today about a third of the people in Borler are elderly. That means a third will be ready for an old folk's home soon.
30:25 PAULA BEHRENS:
Original voice: German
As far as young people with families here go, I think there are two that still have younger children. The others are all already older. The youngest here must be twelve years old now. Below that, nothing's left.
30:45 NARRATOR:
And here are the Raetz's, the family whose son is twelve years old, the youngest in the village. No further offspring far and wide.
30:53 CHRISTINE RAETZ (Mother):
Original voice: German
Thomas basically has only one child to play with here. Otherwise I don't remember that there were ever lots of children in the village.
31:02 THOMAS RAETZ (Son):
Original voice: German
I take the school bus to school in Kelberg. In the morning there's a girl who also takes the bus to Kelberg. (INTERVIEWER: Isn't it a shame that there are so few children in the neighborhood?) Yes, but I can ride my bicycle to go play in Bongart or Bodenbach, too.
31:22 CHRISTINE RAETZ (Mother):
Original voice: German
That means three or four kilometers through the woods to the next village. Then he has others he can play with. It's not as if there was no one. I mean, he has his hobbies, too. He plays with the cat, delivers newspapers. I think his days are pretty well filled. And there are other possibilities here as well.
31:41 THOMAS RAETZ (Son):
Original voice: German
Either I ride my bike to my friends or I go over to Martin's and we play something together.
31:50 NARRATOR:
The mayor is worried about the future of his community.
31:55 PETER FRANKE (Mayor of Borler):
Original voice: German
It's going to be very difficult in the future. It's also a question of whether the buses, the school buses or nursery-school buses are going to run for just one child. If you're already older, then of course there's the peace and quiet that already exists here. You enjoy it and put up with the rest. But I think it's definitely a problem for people with kids. If I wanted to raise my kids here, younger ones, then they would have to have children to play with, or ar least they ought to. And I just don't see that possibility.
32:33 NARRATOR:
Borler is no exception. By 2050, the entire Rhineland-Palatinate, a German state, is going to lose a quarter of its population.
32:42 PROFESSOR VOLKER EICHENER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
The demographic curve looks the same in every region of Germany. After a long phase of population growth the figures start to fall. Very, very slowly at first, then they take a sharp downward turn. What differs is the moment when that bend downward occurs. In eastern German cities it already happened in the early 1990s. In the economically underdeveloped northern German coastal towns it was in the mid-nineties. In the cities in the Ruhr region it was in the late nineties. Cities like Frankfurt will follow in a few years. Cities like Cologne or Munich are going to have another ten or fifteen years, but at some point the demographic transformation comes inevitably to bear.
33:25 NARRATOR:
Historically, the kind of shrinkage awaiting Germany's population in this century has not been seen since the Thirty Years War four hundred years ago. Many towns were abandoned back then. Is that a viable model these days?
33:41 PROFESSOR HERWIG BIRG (University of Bielefeld):
Original voice: German
Basically one would have to close down whole townships completely in order to keep others alive. That would make sense from a rational point of view, but psychologically and politically it would be virtually impossible to say which communities would have to go so that others could live.
34:01 NARRATOR:
Can immigrants fill the gaps? Precisely that is already taking place today in Germany's Ruhr region. Wherever Germans disappear there, immigrants soon become the majority. In the nursery schools and schools at first, then in entire urban districts. For example at the comprehensive school in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf.
34:19 FELICITAS REINERT (School principal):
Original voice: German
The vast majority of our pupils, both male and female, come from an immigrant background. One could say about eighty percent. That's extremely unfair to everyone involved. But unfortunately that's how our society is on the whole. These groups are being unfairly concentrated in certain parts of the city, and this is one of them. We like to say that Ückendorf is a district with a particular need for redevelopment, one could even say a social problem zone. The proportion of immigrant children has risen recently over the last years. That has to do with an increase in ghetto-like structures. In other words, the living conditions in Gelsenkirchen are causing more and more distinct neighborhoods to arise, residential blocks in which only immigrants live, and those where no immigrants live.
35:04 NARRATOR:
The proportion of children of foreign descent is increasing as the number of German children declines. In the Ruhr region that means nearly seventy percent fewer children since the 1970s.
35:14 PROFESSOR KLAUS PETER STROHMEIER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
Meanwhile one third to forty percent of the children are of non-German nationality in those cities hit hardest by the birth-rate decline. And that's not even counting the naturalized children. Which means without foreigners the shrinking of the cities would have been a great deal more intensive than it has been in the past.
35:30 NARRATOR:
The children of immigrants as reinforcements for a shrinking Germany? The idea is conceivable only when integration is addressed in an equally targeted manner: first and foremost their knowledge of the language. Here at a Turkish youth club in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf, the youngsters don't wait for the government to help. Self-help is the key here. Older pupils help younger ones with their homework, because language skills are frequently the biggest obstacle for them in school.
35:57 MALE TURKISH YOUTH 1:
Original voice: German
We're the same way in school. When we speak Turkish to each other in the classroom, the teachers remind us that we're supposed to speak German. We almost always speak Turkish to other Turks.
36:08 MALE TURKISH YOUTH 2:
Original voice: German
In our class we've decided that when Turks speak Turkish they pay ten cents. And each of us Turks has a kind of piggy bank. For example, one word in Turkish means ten cents. In a year that means that someone like our teacher treats everyone to an ice cream.
36:28 MALE TURKISH YOUTH 3:
Original voice: German
I went to the comprehensive school in Ückendorf, too. We had about four or five Germans in the class. The rest were foreigners, twenty of us. During normal German lessons nearly all we spoke was Turkish. The result was that a lot of us had a lot of problems with things like German lessons. But I managed to get by because I also had a lot of contact to German guys.
36:51 BUCAK AYTEKIN (Chairman of the association "Third Generation"):
If I'm in an area where the only people living there are a large number of Turks, then it goes without saying that the only children there are going to be Turks. I ask you: With whom are my kids supposed to speak German so that they learn the language properly? I brought my wife to Germany from Turkey. She understands German very well, but she doesn't speak the language as fluently as I do. The result is that we speak a lot of Turkish at home.
37:12 PROFESSOR VOLKER EICHENER (University of the Ruhr, Bochum):
Original voice: German
Of all the western nations, Germany has the highest rate of immigration by far. On a per capita basis we have two and a half times as many immigrants as the U.S.A., for example. And yet we still regard these immigrants as temporary guests, which is why we've always shied away from a distinct integration policy. Instead of imparting the basics of the German language to foreign children in the second and third generations here, we still teach our language as if it were everyone's mother tongue. The PISA study that compared 32 countries confirmed that none of them educates its immigrants as poorly as Germany does.
37:50 NARRATOR:
In France, the children of immigrants start learning the native tongue much, much earlier. At the école maternelle, or pre-school, lessons already begin at the age of three. At schools with a particularly high percentage of immigrants, even as young as two. In addition, the state is more generous with both funding and teachers to promote the language itself. The Parisian suburb of Massy is a good example. Nonetheless, what committed teachers build up is dashed to bits on the French labor market later on. More than half of the young adults from immigrant families are unemployed and remain so.
Without immigrants the birth rate in France would also be lower, a moderate one point seven children per woman. As a rule African and Arab families have more children, though all it takes is one generation to contradict that cliché. The immigrants adapt to local customs and begin having just as few children as the French themselves. Yet despite such adaptation a distance remains, clearly visible in increasingly isolated residential neighborhoods.
38:49 NARRATOR:
Are there soon going to be ghettos for the elderly alongside the ghettos for foreigners? In the German city of Halle there is a club for senior citizens in the midst of "Silberhöhe", the area being torn down. Groups meet on Tuesdays to play cards. It doesn't matter much to them that the excavators are edging closer and closer.
39:07 OLD MAN 1:
Original voice: German
What do I care about ruins or if nobody lives in them? I look out the window and I see green. And they ought to put up something for the children, too. I think if no one's living there, then get rid of it.
39:18 OLD WOMAN 1:
Original voice: German
Every Tuesday when we come out here it looks different because more buildings are gone. At some point we're going to have difficulties finding our way around.
39:25 OLD MAN 2:
Original voice: German
In ten years we'll be playing cards in the middle of a forest!
40:00 NARRATOR:
The increased ageing of the population is happening all across Europe. In the meantime the highest proportion of elderly people is in Italy.
40:11 PROFESSOR ANTONIO GOLINI (La Sapienza University, Rome):
Original voice: Italian
An ever greater life expectancy on the one hand and an increasingly lower rate of fertility on the other have made Italy the first country in the world in which more old people live than young ones. In other words, we now have the oldest population worldwide.
40:30 NARRATOR:
There are hardly any homes for senior citizens in Italy. They tend more to be day centers for the elderly. The reason for this is a stated policy that the elderly are supposed to stay at home as long as possible. Even if they don't always want to:
40:48 IOLE BERTAGNOLLI:
Original voice: Italian
When my son died I was left all alone. So I applied to the municipal office in Rome to enter a senior citizens' home. Then the social worker told me I should come here to the day center. But I'd rather go to a real senior citizens' home because I'm all alone.
41:12 NARRATOR:
In Rome there aren't enough places for people in the day centers, either. As a result senior citizens can come only one or two days a week. The rest of the week they have to stay at home.
41:24 DR. ADRIANO PUCE (President of a day-care center for senior citizens)
Original voice: French
Facilities where the elderly can stay 24 hours a day, in other words overnight as well, are much more expensive. In contrast, a day center like this is a lot cheaper, so it's more economical to create a situation in which the elderly continue to live at home.
41:44 NARRATOR:
The balance between the retired and the occupationally active is beginning to waver. These days there are still three people working for every retiree, but soon the ratio will be one to one. Each person with a job will have one retired person to support.
42:04 PROFESSOR ANTONIO GOLINI (La Sapienza University, Rome):
Original voice: Italian
The population at an age capable of working is soon going to be the same size as the population aged sixty and older. In terms of economic competition, I don't see how Italy is going to be able to compete with France or England anymore, because at that point the Italian population will be a great deal older than the French or the English, and because the working population has decreased dramatically.
What we could experience is a collapse of the social-welfare state, of the social systems in Italy and Europe. The problem of ever greater life expectancies might solve itself in the process, because if the social-welfare state falls apart, then people's lives won't be longer anymore, they'll be increasingly shorter.
43:00 NARRATOR:
That precisely describes the current situation in Russia. Life expectancies dropped following the collapse of the country's health-care system. But in western Europe people continue to get older and older: an average of eighty-six for women, eighty for men. Paradoxically, at the same time they're going into retirement at an ever younger age. In Germany's Ruhr region, many workers in the coal industry are already retiring at fifty-five, or even fifty. Eugen Krause and Anton Neuhaus would have preferred to stay on the job. They now repair bicycles for neighborhood youngsters on an honorary basis. Staying useful is important to them.
43:39 EUGEN KRAUSE:
Original voice: German
I would have stayed right where I was. Another ten years at best, or at least five. I didn't leave because I had problems with my health. I'm in great shape.
43:49 ANTON NEUHAUS:
Original voice: German
I've been retired now for eight years, but I can't just sit around at home.
43:58 EUGEN KRAUSE:
Original voice: German
I'd start climbing the walls. And we can't go to the pub every day, either.
44:05 NARRATOR:
And yet the world champion in early retirement is France. For instance, in the steel industry workers were retired as soon as they reached fifty. The government financed the concept and tore a huge hole in the state pension fund. The program stopped ten years ago. At the Arcelor steelworks in Dunkirk, management began to rethink the situation at the time. Today workers over fifty continue to receive training. However, that company remains an exception. Nearly everywhere else, the prevailing bias is: The older you are, the less productive.
44:41 PROFESSOR ANNE-MARIE GUILLEMARD (University of Paris):
Original voice: French
Who is going to produce our growth when only one generation is still going to work? The age at which young people start to work is increasingly older, for the older ones it's just the opposite. They're increasingly younger when they stop working because they go into early retirement. If we no longer support and continue training senior workers as soon as they turn forty-five, as most companies are doing these days, who's still going to be working in the future? Where is our productive workforce of tomorrow?
45:10 NARRATOR:
The question demands an urgent reply: When less and less people are working, and thus less and less paying into state health and pension funds, how is Europe with all its expensive social-welfare systems supposed to survive? Is there a way out of the demographic dilemma? Do we need to take on even more immigrants? Or is the time soon going to come when we have to work till we're seventy?
45:40 THE END