Kinder, Küche und Kirche, Family policies and fertility in the Third Reich

After coming to power in 1933, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party employed propaganda to reinforce the dominance of the Aryan Volk and swiftly implemented a series of economic and proactive family policies. Among these measures, the ’Law for the Encouragement of Marriage’ emerged as one of the most far-reaching and distortionary policies in the history of family policy. Its primary aim was to restrict women’s labor force participation in order to alleviate unemployment and promote the growth of the Aryan population. We evaluate the impact of National Socialism on marital fertility in (West) Germany by analyzing census data from 1933, 1939, and 1970. Our findings indicate that the first years of domination by the Nazis are associated with a transitory increase in fertility until 1938. Importantly, German women who were fully exposed to the Nazi family policies experienced a smaller rise in marital fertility as measured in 1938, compared to their compatriots who had only partial exposure. This relative decline can be attributed to the severe penalties imposed on childless, unmarried individuals, which incentivized Germans to enter into lower-quality and less fertile unions. The negative selection effect, depressing fertility, persisted until 1970, and represents the primary legacy of Nazism on the fertility of German women.