There are few places more sensitive to the winds of the demographic winter than daycares. Germany knows it well. Until not so long ago parents they saw them and desired to find a place in the busiest metropolises in the country, which sometimes forced them to sign up for eternal waiting lists. Today the situation is different. At least in Berlin, where the decline in the birth rate (along with other factors) has given the turn to the tortilla: Now the problem is not with parents unable to find space, but with daycare centers with hundreds of vacancies.
Nothing they haven’t already experienced in Japan.
The problem of daycares. In Germany, families with babies have long been accustomed to daycare being a headache. Of course, not always for the same reason. For a long time the country, especially the most populous cities, dealt with a shortage of supply. There were few places for children. There was even a shortage of qualified personnel to care for them, which led some kindergartens in the country to sign personnel abroad.
Today the situation is different: in some areas of the country (including Berlin) there are daycare centers in which there are plenty of places and what is scarce are children to occupy them. So much so that there are centers that have had no choice but to close your doors. Others search shapes to attract users. a mother explained recently how he applied to ten schools (kitas) for your child. Eight said yes. They even urged him to confirm. Unthinkable a few years ago.
“A big drop”. The change in trend was confirmed on Tuesday by Claudia Freistühler, director of Kindergärten City. During an interview in Financial Times He speaks openly of the “enormous drop” in demand suffered by some nurseries, a drop that is mainly explained by the birth rate. His group manages 58 centers spread throughout Berlin, a broad network that usually serves more than 7,000 children. In 2025, Freistühler estimates that there will be no more than 6,000.
Babies wanted. It is not the only alarm signal. In October a spokesperson for Fröbel, a group that runs some 250 daycare centers in Germany, recognized Le Monde that today’s priorities (and concerns) have little to do with those of 2024 or 2023. “Until last year our main concern was finding qualified personnel. We had difficulties hiring. What we invested in recruiting personnel we now dedicate more and more to attracting families.”
The problem is not unique to Berlin. The change in balance between supply and demand extends to other cities in Germany, such as Frankfurt, Bremen or Münster, cities in which there are centers that have gone from rejecting admission applications and managing long waiting lists to having to refine their ingenuity to attract students and not start the course with vacancies. From deficit to excess.
The situation has changed so much that in autumn half and The Local either Die Zeit They reported unusual news: the closure of two public daycare centers in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district of Berlin due to a lack of children. “Their numbers have dropped drastically and we have suffered losses,” explained the Government. Other Berlin centers face the same fate. Nothing that they haven’t been experiencing for years. in Japanwhere schools are already being converted in factories.
Why is it so surprising? Germany is not the only country in which schools suffer from a drop in birth rates. Without going any further, in Spain the sector calculates that 25% of private nursery schools have closed in the last five years. If the German case has aroused so much expectation, it is because the situation there has changed radically in a very short time. not so long ago was calculated that in Germany there was a deficit of 300,000 places daycare (some raise the total to 430,000) and that some 125,000 professionals were needed in the sector.
In December the German Economic Institute (IW) itself estimated that 7.3% of children under three years of age in East Germany who need a place are left without one, a percentage that rises to 15.6% in West Germany. In the case of Lower Saxony, it was estimated that about 33,700 were missing. That doesn’t mean that this is the “picture” of all of Germany. The IW itself recognize that the number of children in public daycares has decreased since 2023 and a quick search in the newspaper archive comes to find news about surplus of places in the capital.
Sum of factors. The question is therefore obvious… What is the reason for this change of scenario, which is leaving vacancies in some areas of the country? To understand it you have to handle several keys. The main one, demographics. Like many other nations in Europe (and beyond), Germany has been seeing its birth rate plummet for several decades. Its index has had ups and downs, but in 2023 it stood at 1.4 children per womanfar from the 2.5 that it registered in the 60s.
However, the birth rate is not the only cause of the situation experienced by daycare centers in some large cities in Germany. Another must be found in the real estate sector. If children are scarce in certain central districts it is because rising rents drive families to other areas. With that backdrop, Financial Times assuresciting sources from the local education department, which in Berlin have closed almost a hundred kindergartens in two years.
Much more than daycare. Daycare centers are not only demographic indicators. In the case of Germany they also have an important drift in the economy. Although the nation has one of the highest rates of female participation in the European labor market (76%), part-time work is common among women with young children. In fact, it is estimated that in 2023 only 27% of mothers with children in their care were working full-time, far from the percentage recorded among men, of 91%.
Daycares and the child care sector are crucial to changing that percentage. The key, how they slide now some voices in the sector, is whether the effort to strengthen supply has arrived “too late” in cities like Berlin.
Image | Nathan Cima (Unsplash)
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