Schwerin (dpa/mv) - The number of children and young people in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has increased by almost 14 percent within a decade. According to the State Statistical Office, 246,258 children and young people up to the age of 18 lived in the northeast at the end of 2020 - 29,782 more than at the end of 2010, as the office announced on Monday in Schwerin. The biggest change with plus 33 percent was in girls between 14 and 17 years.
Only in the under-threes age group were there fewer children at the end of 2020 than there were ten years earlier. The decrease is three percent. This fits in with the birth rates in the north-east, which have been falling again since 2017. Last year, the statisticians counted 11,845 births. The last time it was less than 12,000 was in 1996. This decline has been predicted by demographers as a result of the great emigration of the 1990s. Now women of the age at which they have children were missing.
