BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s population rose to 83.2 million last year, but its growth was the slowest for seven years, according to official figures released Friday.
About 200,000 more people were living in Germany at the end of 2019 than a year earlier, the Federal Statistical Office said in a preliminary estimate. It added that that was the smallest increase since 2012.
Germany saw an influx of migrants in 2015 in particular, and net immigration now appears to have declined in each of the four following years.
However, population gains are still driven entirely by immigration, the statistics office said. Without people coming to Germany, the population would have shrunk since 1972 because deaths have outpaced births every year, it said. It has actually grown in most of the three decades since reunification, except in 1998 and between 2003 and 2010.
Last year, between 770,000 and 790,000 children were born in Germany and between 920,000 and 940,000 people died, the office estimated.