Germany: A closer look at the demographics

Germany: A closer look at the demographics

A couple of days ago I published a news article about a recent comprehensive report on the immigrants in Germany.

According to this report, immigrants (and their descendants) make up about a third of the population in the 0-5 age group. Does this mean that in 20 years Muslims will make up a third of the population?

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog - islamineurope.blogspot.com

The data comes from a 2008 'micro-census', published by the German Federal Statistical Office. The data does not give the religion of the immigrants, but rather their national background.

I put the information together in a chart. As can be seen from the chart below, Turks make up about 3% of the total population in Germany. This is about 16% of the total number of immigrants.

(click the chart to enlarge)

There are more immigrants from the EU-27 countries (5%) and those who did not answer the question (~6%).

This last group is a very interesting one, and it is definitely growing, making up almost 18% of the total population in the 0-5 age group, and more than half of the total number of immigrants in that age group.

Are they Muslim? Not according to every other statistical measure. Muslims are estimated to be 4-5% of the total population, and most Muslims in Germany are Turks. Adding the 'unknowns' to the data as Muslims would mean that Muslims make up 9% of the total population in Germany today, and that Turks make up just a third of that.

Back to the Turks. While they make up 6% of the total population in the 10-15 age group, they make up less than 3% in the 0-5 age group. This drop shows up in absolute numbers as well: down from 234,000 children aged 10-15 to 81,000 aged 0-5.

Immigrants make up 34% of the children aged 0-5. A third of those are from Europe (17% from the EU-27 countries, and 17% from elsewhere in Europe). 8% are from Asia, Australia and Oceania, 3% from America, 4% from Africa. 51% are 'unknown'.

I would love to get to some conclusions on this issue, but I find it impossible to do with that big group of 'unknowns'.

What I do see from the given data is that the groups coming from Muslim majority areas (Turkey, Bosnia, Middle East, Southeast Asia) are either decreasing in population in the young children age groups, or are pretty much static.