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A third of German children born out of wedlock

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A third of German children born out of wedlock
Photo: DPA

An increasing number of German children are being born out of wedlock, according to official government figures released on Tuesday.

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The Federal Statistics office said that 202,000 children born in 2006 – 30 percent of all babies born that year – did not have parents married at the time of birth. That was up considerably from 1998, when only 20 percent were born out of wedlock after the legal status of illegitimate children was improved. In 1993 only 15 percent of German children were born outside of marriage.

There are also large regional disparities within Germany for parents choosing to have children without getting married first. Germans in the northern and eastern parts of the country are far more likely to have children out of wedlock compared to southern and western Germany.

The eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt recorded the highest number of births out of wedlock, with each seeing 63 percent of all babies born outside of marriage.

The southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg had the lowest number of illegitimate children. Only 20 percent of children there had parents that weren’t married.

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