Germany records highest birth rate since 1970s

Germany recorded a bounce in the birth rate in 2016, official statistics showed Wednesday. The country hit a 43-year high helped along by large numbers of recently-arrived migrants, AFP reported. Some 792,131 children were born in Europe’s most populous nation in 2016, federal statistics authority Destatis said, an increase of 7 percent over the previous year. While German women had some 3 percent more babies than in 2015, at 607,500, non-German births increased 25 percent, to 184,660. “The number of women from countries with traditionally higher tendency to bear children increased” following a surge in migration in 2015-16, Destatis said. Those years saw more than a million people arrive in Germany, many from conflict hotspots in the Middle East.