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BERLIN, Jan 28, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Germany's new chancellor has made raising the county's birth rate a priority because some 40 percent of women are not having children.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is concerned that more than a third of German women are not having children and every year 100,000 more Germans die than are born, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.
Currently, each German generation is shrinking by about a third, but even in the poverty and despair after World War II, more babies were born than now, according to Harald Michel, the head of the Institute for Applied Demography.
However, the 51-year-old Merkel, has no children.
"It just did not fit in with my career path," she said.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
