Multitudes of care facilities yet to be found

In recent years, Germany has witnessed a notable increase in its birth rate, with the number of children under three years old currently standing higher than a decade ago. This trend, which has been observed over the past ten years, indicates a growing population of young children in the country.

According to available data, the number of children under three in Germany increased from 2.04 million ten years ago to 2.35 million in 2020. This growth, however, has recently shown a slight downward trend.

Despite this growth, the situation regarding the shortage of daycare places for children under three years old has hardly changed. As of spring 2021, around 340,000 daycare places were missing, a figure that has remained relatively constant.

Researchers in Cologne have highlighted the expansion of childcare as a topic of focus, emphasizing the need for its gradual closure to meet the growing demand. A study analyzing georeferenced data on daycare centers combined with sociodemographic information from 52 German cities and 2,613 districts was conducted, but the specific organization or person responsible for the report remains unnamed in the available search results.

The agreed expansion of 750,000 daycare places in 2007 for 2013 was not reached until 2017. The demand for promoting the expansion of childcare has been consistently emphasized by these Cologne researchers.

The quality of care for children under three years old is likely to become an increasing challenge in the future, given the growing population of young children and the persisting shortage of daycare places.

The decrease in the number of children in daycare in 2021 is attributed to the pandemic, as parents delayed sending their children to daycare due to infection concerns, distorting the data. As a result, no meaningful information on the care gap for the year 2021 can be determined due to the pandemic-related distortion in data.

Despite these challenges, the demand for daycare places for children under three years old is expected to continue to rise, underscoring the importance of addressing the daycare shortage to ensure the well-being of Germany's youngest citizens.