It’s a narcissistic injury. France, which was one of the last developed countries to boast a dynamic birth rate, has lost this status. Clearly, everything is gone! According to INSEE, only 726,000 babies were born in France last year. This figure is the lowest since World War II. In 2022, births to mothers aged 30 to 34 fell by 4% in a single year. The only positive sign: the number of births to mothers over 40 is increasing. This – small – consolation can be compared to a structural phenomenon: the increase in the average age of mothers at birth, which now stands at 31.2 years, up one year in a decade.
Before crying bitterly over this new sign of French decline, let’s try to understand the causes and look at the solutions. Statistically, the number of births is linked to the number of women of childbearing age and the fertility rate – the number of children per woman aged 15 to 50. However, these two indicators are trending downward. The baby boom generations, which are the largest, are no longer of childbearing age. As for the fertility rate, it now stands in our country at 1.8 children per woman, well below the threshold of 2.1 which would allow the population to stabilize “naturally”, without the contribution of immigration.
Children “for themselves”
There are several reasons for the negative trend in these figures. The first concerns an iron law of human societies. The richer they become, the less they reproduce. To put it in the clinical language of demographers, “quality” is preferred to “quantity”. We no longer give birth in a utilitarian way to have descendants who will take care of us. On the contrary, we want children “for themselves”, who will benefit from the best education and a fulfilling life for as long as possible. This concern can go, paradoxically, to the point of renouncing procreation. The world is so harsh and worrying that it is better to refrain from having descendants, some argue – I believe this misconception from beginning to end, but it is clear that it is spreading.
The second reason is linked to the lengthening of studies and the harshness of professional life at the start of a career, which make life as a couple more difficult and even bear responsibility for the “sexual recession”, i.e. the drop in frequency of intimate relationships, a phenomenon particularly documented in the United States and from which France has no reason to escape. There is, finally, a “materialist” explanation which considers that the drop in the fertility rate is due to the tightening of family policy, notably with the reduction in the ceiling of the family quotient, during the mandate of François Hollande. This political analysis overlooks the fact that the decline seems to come from further afield and that it does not spare the many countries which did not have François Hollande as President of the Republic.
Technology, condition of prosperity
Most likely, the decline in the number of births is a serious sociological phenomenon, and difficult to reverse. Increasing the number of crèches or making taxation for large families more advantageous are undoubtedly good ideas, but these measures will not be enough to lay the foundation for an effective pronatalist policy, which probably does not exist in any case.
To remain powerful and prosperous, France can still massively rely on immigration and/or technology. Opening the floodgates at the borders would reverse demographic decline. This is also what Germany did. Needless to say, an immense majority of French people are completely opposed to this policy, which is therefore unthinkable outside of academic conversations? There remains, therefore, the “Japanese-style” answer, which seems the least bad. Since it is certain that the French will be fewer in number in the future, we must invest massively in technology, training and work, to maintain our world rank. Demographic decline is not a catastrophe if those who populate our country remain driven by a desire for excellence!