German population grows, but not because of birth rate

BERLIN (Reuters) -- Germany's population grew slightly in the 1990s only because of immigration, as the number of deaths outpaced births throughout the decade, the Federal Statistics Office said on Tuesday.

Germany's population grew 0.2 percent to 82,163,000 at the end of 1999 after a tiny fall the year before. Ten years earlier, the combined population of East and West Germany was 79,113,000, but the increase was due only to the growth of Germany's foreign-born population.

"In 1999, 202,000 more people moved to Germany than moved away," a Statistics Office statement said in explaining the population growth. "The surplus of deaths over births was 76,000 in 1999."

That surplus is at the heart of Germany's bitter immigration debate, with more politicians accepting the need to rejuvenate the aging population through immigration to ease strains on the state pensions system.

Helmut Kohl's conservative Christian Democrats insisted during the 16 years they held power until 1998 that Germany was not open to immigrants despite having more than seven million foreign residents.

The current chancellor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, has proposed issuing fast-track entry visas for non-European Union citizens to fill labor shortages in the computer sector.

Over the 1990s both Germany's death and birth rates have fallen. In 1999, 846,000 Germans died, compared with 921,000 at the beginning of the decade.

Last year, the number of living births was 771,000, compared to 906,000 in 1990.

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