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Munich (dpa / lby) - In Bavaria, a corona-related baby boom has probably failed to materialize.
With the exception of Munich, the vast majority of registry offices in the independent cities and the district towns in the Munich area did not report a noticeable increase in the number of birth notifications and notifications in December and January.
In many places, the births have even decreased somewhat, as the survey of 31 Bavarian municipalities has shown.
After the first spring lockdown, there was widespread speculation in many European countries about a coming baby boom because virtually all women and men of childbearing age spent several weeks at home.
However, some economists had already pointed out in the summer that major economic crises tend to be associated with falling birth rates.
The registry offices in the 31 cities reported 7,285 birth announcements or notarizations in January, 161 fewer than a year earlier.
What is striking, however, is December with 6558 - that would be 1100 more than in December 2019. The figures show the trend in the respective cities, but are not exact.
Some municipalities reported births or birth announcements, others the number of birth certificates issued, which is not identical.
Rosenheim, for example, gave the births for local parents, but no figures for expectant mothers from the surrounding communities who had come to the city on the Inn for delivery.
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The Bavaria-wide increase in December is largely due to Munich.
A total of 3461 births were reported in the state capital in December and January, almost 1000 more than a year earlier.
The reasons are mysterious, because neither the municipal clinics nor the gynecological clinics of the Ludwig Maximilians University reported a corresponding baby boom.
However, the corona pandemic has led to deviations in many places because maternity wards were temporarily closed due to corona and expectant mothers had to move to other places for delivery.
"In addition, there is an increasing number of home births that are not registered in the statistics of the clinics," says a spokesman for the Munich district administration department.
In no other city was there a statistical outlier comparable to that in Munich: Nuremberg reported 42 births more than a year earlier for both months, Augsburg 107 fewer birth certificates.
There were also declines in the next larger cities of Regensburg, Ingolstadt and Fürth.
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The Germany figures for 2020 also do not point to a baby boom at the end of the year.
An essential indicator is the birth list of the baby food manufacturer Milupa, which is regarded as a reputable source by medical professionals and which publishes its data much faster than the statistical offices.
According to this, 745,739 births were reported in Germany's hospitals in 2020, over 5000 fewer than in the previous year.
The official figures from the State Statistical Office for the whole of Bavaria will probably be some time in coming.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210301-99-634358 / 2