NIEDERSACHSEN - Population
With almost 8 million inhabitants as of 2003, Niedersachsen is among the four German Länder with the largest populations, coming after Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Population growth, which was somewhat below the national average between 1970 and 1989, has picked up again, to become one of the highest in Germany (8.4% between 1990 and 2003).
Nevertheless, the birth rate has been falling markedly since 1990, from 11.2 births per 1 000 inhabitants in that year to 9.2 in 2002, and the number of deaths has consistently been higher than the number of births. The increase in Niedersachsen's population is due solely to net migration, especially from Hamburg and Bremen and, since 1990, from the five new Länder and the countries of Eastern Europe. Compared with the other "old" Länder, Niedersachsen has a low proportion of foreigners, who made up just 6.0% of the population in 2002.
The consistently low birth rate over the last 20 years has meant a marked decline in the percentage of young people in the total population. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of over-65s, in both relative and absolute terms, and there are now more over-65 year-olds than there are under-15s.
In 2002, the infant mortality rate of 4.7 deaths per 1 000 births was slightly higher than the EU average of 4.6 (2001).
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