Germany may be reunified, but the divide is still clear.

It doesn’t take long to see an empty storefront, or the neighborhood’s growing number of elderly people.

Now, Jan-Niklas, who sees the reunion as a “success story,” is on a mission to bring young people and families back together.

He says it’s “home”. “I love the people. I think they deserve to[do]well.”

In his late teens, he worked for a large German bank in recruiting and moved back. His homecoming made the local news.

“Back to Osscherleben after 13 years,” read the Volksstimm (Voice of the People) headline. “Response calls for ways to deal with skilled-labor shortages.”

This population decline is only one problem; Filling vacancies, including critical social and health care roles, to support a growing aging population.

Fewer people can afford services such as shops, maternity wards and schools.

Large numbers of immigrants or refugees have come to Germany from countries including Ukraine, Syria and Turkey – as well as from other EU countries – those migrants mainly to large cities such as Berlin and the urbanized West.

And even when accounting for these people, Germany’s baby-boomer generation is increasingly retiring and the national birth rate is falling to a record low.

It means a shrinking workforce will have to shoulder the costs of a growing number of retirees.

The birth rate began to decline in the late sixties, after the birth control pill was introduced and women were more likely to join the workforce. But last year the number of births reached the lowest level since 1946, according to preliminary figures.

Professor Martin Boujard of the Federal Institute for Population Research, a government agency, suggests that the impact of international crises such as Covid and the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the trend.

Professor Bujard said, “The birth rate in Germany decreased nine or ten months after Russia began its full invasion.”

Recent statistics show that women without German citizenship have more children than German citizens, 1.84 and 1.23 respectively (known as the fertility rate).

But both are below the 2.1 “replacement rate”. The degree to which a population is maintained from one generation to the next.

Germany is not alone in this. The United Nations has warned of an unprecedented global decline in fertility rates, driven by factors such as a lack of affordable and suitable housing.

What is unique about eastern Germany today is that these birth rates occurred so recently – and so quickly – in a crowded population.