A record share of children born in German hospitals have been delivered by the caesarean section, with the procedure accounting for 33% of hospital births, the Federal Statistical Office announced on Monday.
A total of 654,600 women gave birth in German hospitals in 2024, with 215,900 of them giving birth by a caesarean or C-section.
The rate of c-section deliveries has more than doubled since 1991, when only 15% of all hospital births were by caesarean section. Germany reunified in 1990 following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Higher C-section rates were seen mainly in western Germany, with Hamburg leading the way with 36.4% while there were lower rates in the east, with Saxony at 27.4%
A total of 60.1% of women in hospital gave birth naturally.
The rise in Caesareans comes as the number of babies born in Germany fell to the lowest level since the end of World War II last year, the data office reported last week.
The number of births fell for the fourth consecutive year to around 654,300 in 2025, 3.4% fewer than in the previous year, according to preliminary figures from the Wiesbaden-based agency.
This was the largest deficit of the post-war period, it said, including during the Cold War, when the country was divided between West Germany, a member of NATO, and socialist East Germany.
The drop in births can be explained by a demographic decline in the 1990s following reunification, the agency explained, with smaller generations now reaching their early 30s, when many people decide whether to have children.
More than 35 years after reunification, the trend for births in Germany remained uneven, with the decline more pronounced in eastern regions at -4.5% to western states at -3.2%.
-dpa
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