300,000 childcare places for children under three years of age are lacking: An examination of the development of the number of childcare places available and the demand for them

While there were 2.28 million children under the age of three living in Germany at the end of 2022, by the end of 2024 there were only 2.12 million. At the same time, the childcare rate also fell slightly last year from 38.2 per cent to 37.8 per cent (based on the number of children after adjusting the population figures with the 2022 census). This has only happened once before – during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021. Based on parents' childcare preferences from the previous year, there would have been a need for 1.10 million childcare places for children under the age of three in 2025. This results in a calculated shortfall of 300,000 places.

However, the situation varies greatly from region to region. In the east, the number of children under the age of three declined by 19.6 per cent between 31 December 2018 and 31 December 2023. As a result, the calculated demand for childcare places between 2019 and 2025 has fallen from 261,000 to just 213,000. This negative trend is likely to continue, as there are no signs of a reversal in the birth rate in the east. With a childcare coverage rate of 54.9 per cent in 2025, the childcare infrastructure is already very well developed. This means that a reduction in capacity is almost inevitable. However, this only affects the facilities and not the staff. These persons should be deployed to improve the relationships between childcare workers and children, thereby enhancing the quality of the services provided.

In western Germany, the calculated demand for childcare places in 2025 was 890,000, which is similar to the 2019 figure of 891,000. This is due to a combination of a much smaller decline in the number of children than in the east and a continuing increase in parents' demand for childcare. In Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in particular, this trend is unlikely to come to an end soon, although government-controlled developments in parental contributions and other aspects of the institutional framework may also have an influence. Currently, there is a shortage of 87,000 childcare places in these two states together and 85,000 in North Rhine-Westphalia. Relative to the number of children, the gaps are highest in Bremen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and North Rhine-Westphalia, with figures between 18 per cent and 19 per cent. Overall, there is a gap of 15.6 per cent for western Germany. The childcare rate is particularly high in Hamburg at 49.3 per cent, whereas in Bremen it is more than a third lower at 31.3 per cent. There, more than a fifth of children still do not attend daycare at the age of three, which can be very problematic for the children's development and participation opportunities, given the comparatively heterogeneous population in Bremen. In principle, the focus in the coming years should not only be on providing childcare services that meet parents' needs as fully as possible, but also important at bringing children with special support needs – especially in the area of German language acquisition – into daycare centres early in life, even if their parents do not necessarily want institutional care for them yet.