Never before had so fewer babies beenborn in Germany as the natural birth rate in the so farmost-populous European country hits an all time low, arousingwidespread concerns about the population-related issues in thefuture, the latest statistics showed Monday.

Merely 663,000 children were born in 2011, 15,000 fewer than theyear before, and declined by 2.2 percent, according to a reportbased on the preliminary data by the Wiesbaden-based FederalStatistical Office of Germany.

By comparison, there were still nearly 1.4 million newly-bornbabies in Germany in 1964, while since then on the birth rate kepton a downward trends steadily.

Since 1972, the deaths had outnumbered that of the newly-bornchildren, while the gap between the birth-death ratio alsoincreased remarkably during the past years, as the number of deathsin 2011 fell only slightly by 0.7 percent to reach at 852,000,however, its momentum still remains a little bit stronger than inthe births, statistics showed.

Despite the negative trends persisted, the German populationincreased last year due to a remarkable influx of more immigrantsinto the country, as a total of 279,000 people moved into andsettled down in Germany in 2011, posting the highest figure duringthe past decade.

As a consequence, it added up nearly 100,000 inhabitants intothe German population as a whole, said Reinhold Zahn, a leadingexpert of Destatis, at the press conference in Wiesbaden.

Statistics point to the fact that a downward trend of the totalpopulation growth rate in Germany would continue in a long run, byno means would it be stoppable.

Fewer birth rates also mean that it will in turn lead to fewermothers in a few decade ahead, while if nowadays-born girls grow upas the women who also keep nowadays' average birth rate of lessthan 2.1 children, the number of babies will inevitably continue todecline.

In that scenario, the number of deaths rate will increase inlight of the problem of an aging society become more and moreacute.

Statistics showed that the Germans were not only tend to havefewer children, they are also less likely to marry, as the numberof marriages declined year on year by 1.1 percent, with just378,000 pairs in 2011 having got the marriage knot.

The information provided by the Federal Statistical Office isexpected to present the formal final results until August.