Should we really be worried about France’s declining fertility rate?

In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.7% few­er than in 2020 and 16% few­er than in 2010. We are now at an aver­age of 1.68 chil­dren per woman, the low­est fer­til­i­ty rate since 1945. There was a very rapid fall last year, which no one quite under­stands. We don’t know what could have caused this sud­den down­turn; there were no major polit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic events, as was the case in the Unit­ed States in 2009, for exam­ple, fol­low­ing the cred­it crunch. It would be irre­spon­si­ble to attempt to over­sim­pli­fy the rea­sons behind this sharp fall. Nor is there any link with the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. The decline in fer­til­i­ty began around 2012 in France, when there was a marked drop. The decline was then fair­ly steady until 2023.

Glob­al­ly, the con­trasts are increas­ing. The world can be divid­ed into three main regions: a part of Africa, from the Sahel to Botswana, where there is a demo­graph­ic explo­sion, with the record being Niger (6.8 chil­dren per woman); the Far East, where fer­til­i­ty is falling rapid­ly, with the record being South Korea (0.78 chil­dren per woman); and final­ly, the rest of the world, where births fluc­tu­ate between 1.5 and 2.5 chil­dren per woman on average.

France has had one of the high­est birth rates in Europe for quite some time, and this is still the case, but not by much. Ire­land and Roma­nia are more or less at the same lev­el. Across the Euro­pean Union, there is con­ver­gence at around 1.5 chil­dren per woman. Euro­stat data clear­ly show a fair­ly sharp fall in all the Euro­pean coun­tries where births were high­est. On the oth­er hand, where fer­til­i­ty was the low­est, it has remained so or risen slight­ly. There is no doubt that a Euro­pean fam­i­ly mod­el is emerging.

The main rea­son for this con­ver­gence is a change in the rela­tion­ship between men and women. Women, who are far more high­ly edu­cat­ed than men, are less accept­ing of the dou­ble work­ing day and the unequal divi­sion of labour than they were in the 1980s, for exam­ple. This mech­a­nism is in the process of being set in motion in many Euro­pean coun­tries. In addi­tion, the aver­age age of moth­ers at the birth of their first child con­tin­ues to rise, which tech­ni­cal­ly reduces fer­til­i­ty, as it is spread over a slight­ly longer peri­od. For this rea­son, the fer­til­i­ty rate falls at younger ages, up to 30–35, then sta­bilis­es and ris­es there­after. Final­ly, there is an increase in the pro­por­tion of women who have no chil­dren or only one.

It’s the same thing because there is a turn­ing point. When you fol­low demo­graph­ic indices, there is a point at which they reverse, but that takes time. It takes at least one gen­er­a­tion; every 30 or 40 years. So, there was the baby-boom gen­er­a­tion, the gen­er­a­tion that delayed child­bear­ing, and now we’re fac­ing a rever­sal that will lead to a fair­ly low fer­til­i­ty rate of around 1.5 chil­dren per woman.

We always think that imme­di­ate events will have con­se­quences, but only a few events mark a rapid change. The oil cri­sis in 1973 was a major turn­ing point, but it was pre­ced­ed by the arrival of mod­ern con­tra­cep­tion in 1965, which trig­gered a fall in fertility.

There is a lot of con­fu­sion about this impact. At the time of the pen­sion reform, the polit­i­cal right claimed that the drop in the birth rate was very seri­ous for the bal­ance of the sys­tem. In real­i­ty, it depends on the time frame you look at. The pen­sion sys­tem will only be affect­ed when the gen­er­a­tions born today enter the labour mar­ket, i.e. in just over 20 years’ time. Until 2045, there­fore, there will be no prob­lem in rela­tion to pen­sions. Will there be any neg­a­tive con­se­quences in the short or medi­um term? It’s dif­fi­cult to say. There will be changes in con­sump­tion, an increase in pur­chas­ing pow­er for adults, low­er costs for schools, or the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing few­er chil­dren per class… It’s not all neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive. I car­ried out a study show­ing that the prob­lem of pen­sions will affect the gen­er­a­tions that have had few­er or no chil­dren, so they will have had more dis­pos­able income for them­selves at the ages when chil­dren are con­ceived. This makes sense in a way that is rarely mentioned.

No, that’s an old idea. The French have very much hoped that there would be a link. There have been many stud­ies, notably those by the econ­o­mist Alfred Sauvy, but they have nev­er shown any­thing of the sort. Cor­re­la­tions don’t work. It’s too dis­joint­ed, there are so many inter­me­di­aries between eco­nom­ic and demo­graph­ic growth, such as edu­ca­tion, investment…

The impor­tance of fer­til­i­ty dates back to the defeat by Ger­many in 1870. It was thought that because the Ger­mans had more chil­dren, they would have more sol­diers. The defeat was equat­ed with France’s low fer­til­i­ty rate, which was incor­rect. In real­i­ty, Ger­many had few­er sol­diers at the time. The Church claimed that the defeat was a pun­ish­ment because the French were not hav­ing enough chil­dren. This was a source of regret, which led to the devel­op­ment of pro-natal­ist move­ments. The idea spread that it was bad to have only one child. Psy­chol­o­gists claimed that an only child socialised bad­ly, which lat­er led to the cre­ation of nurs­eries and crèch­es. Com­bat­ing the one-child pol­i­cy ensured that the fer­til­i­ty rate rose again dur­ing the baby boom from 1945–1946 onwards. It’s a ques­tion of morals, spe­cif­ic to France. Coun­tries such as Eng­land and Ger­many have nev­er been afraid of hav­ing low fer­til­i­ty rates; in fact, his­tor­i­cal­ly, the oppo­site has been true. So, there is still this idea in the French men­tal­i­ty that hav­ing chil­dren is good for the coun­try. This theme is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong among politi­cians, because it shows that they care about the nation.

Birth rate poli­cies have almost no effect. Many stud­ies have been car­ried out, par­tic­u­lar­ly in oth­er coun­tries. In 1967, Roman­ian Pres­i­dent Nico­lae Ceaușes­cu banned abor­tion. The fol­low­ing year, fer­til­i­ty dou­bled, but it quick­ly dropped again. In Chi­na, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, it was not the one-child pol­i­cy that caused a fall in birth rates. By 1978, when it was intro­duced, Chi­na had already gone from 5 chil­dren per woman to 2.7. This mea­sure mere­ly accom­pa­nied the trend. And when the one-child pol­i­cy was aban­doned in 2016, instead of ris­ing, fer­til­i­ty plum­met­ed (to 1.11 chil­dren per woman in 2022).

In Euro­pean coun­tries, there is often a wind­fall effect fol­low­ing a pro-natal­ist mea­sure. There is a small rise in the num­ber of births in the fol­low­ing year or two, then a small fall, and the ini­tial lev­el is reached again. In Hun­gary, a pro-natal­ist pol­i­cy is cur­rent­ly being imple­ment­ed. How­ev­er, fer­til­i­ty trends are evolv­ing in the same way as in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. Small advan­tages are not going to change a deci­sion as impor­tant as that of build­ing a fam­i­ly. OECD econ­o­mist Olivi­er Thévenon puts the increase in fer­til­i­ty at 5% if we off­set a quar­ter of the cost of hav­ing a child, which is a lot. That’s 0.1 chil­dren in France. Increas­ing­ly, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fer­til­i­ty rates cor­re­sponds to major cul­tur­al group­ings, such as South­ern Europe and East Asia…

Sirine Azouaoui