Germany: Average age for fathers shows steady rise

The average age of men who become fathers of first-born children in 2020 nudged up to 33.2 years, German government figures showed on Tuesday.

Germany's Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) said the average age had risen almost continuously for the past five years, and from 32.8 years in 2015.

The figures — released just ahead of German Father's Day on Thursday — were for men whose partners gave birth to their first children.

The mothers were likely to be younger — on average about three years — than their partners. Statistics compiled in a recent similar study showed that the average age of first-time mothers was 30.2 years. That represented a significant rise from a decade earlier, when first-time mothers were 29-years-old on average.

Of the nearly 360,000 firstborn children born in 2020, some 14% had a father aged 40 or older. However, only 2.9% had a mother of that age. For 1.5% of the firstborns, the father was 50 or older.

Consistently low birth rates

Germany has previously reported zero population growth in 2020, with the coronavirus pandemic raising the number of deaths and limiting migration.

The nation of some 82 million people is one of a very few countries to have consistently averaged fertility rates well below "break even" levels for decades. 

In Germany, the birth rate in 2020 was 1.53 children per woman — which puts Germany in line with the EU average. It was the fourth successive year that it had fallen — after a brief rise between 2014 and 2016.