Total fertility rate of Germany 1800-2020

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In Germany in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have 5.4 children over the course of their lifetime. It remained around this number until the late 1820s, when it then dropped to just under five, which was a long-term effect of the Napoleonic Period in Europe. From this point until the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's fertility rate was rather sporadic, reaching it's lowest point in 1855 with an average of 4.6 births per woman, and it's highest point in 1875 (just after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871), with an average of 5.4 live births per woman. From the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the Second World War, Germany's fertility rate dropped from around 5 children per woman in 1900, to 1.9 in 1945. The only time where the fertility rate increased was in the inter-war years. Like other countries heavily involved in the Second World War, Germany (both East and West) experienced a Baby Boom from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, however it then dropped to it's lowest point of just 1.3 children per woman by 1995, shortly after the re-unification of Germany. In recent years, Germany's fertility rate has gradually been increasing again, and is expected to reach 1.6 in 2020, its highest rate in over forty years.