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