“Where can you be better than within a family? Everywhere else!” In 1948, at the dawn of the peak birth rate of the Trente Glorieuses known as the baby boom, Hervé Bazin captured in this well-felt formula the evolution of family values under the effects of individualization. A little over seventy years later, the novelist’s humor resonates with a particular tone. The year 2023 is that of an exceptional decline in the birth rate, with a drop of 6.6% in the number of births compared to 2022, or 48,000 fewer births.
If demographers are still struggling to put their finger on all the factors which explain this sudden drop in the birth rate, Emmanuel Macron has decided to tackle the problem head on, announcing during his press conference, with he emphasis that we know, a “demographic rearmament”. Concretely, this will involve putting in place a “major plan against infertility” and a recasting of “parental leave” into “birth leave”, knowing that today, only 14% of women and less than 1% of men resort to help due to the low level of compensation (maximum 430 euros per month). If uncertainty persists regarding the terms of this leave, the government is studying the possibility of increasing the compensation so that it is “proportionate to the last level of income”.
These announcements raised some concerns in the ranks of the opposition, particularly on the left. “But what is he involved in?” asked Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecology Les Verts at Sud Radio. Sandrine Rousseau, who had nevertheless affirmed that “the private is political”, even allowed herself a liberal outburst by declaring that “women’s uteruses are not a matter of state”.
What these critiques have in common is that they debate the legitimacy of pronatalist policies in liberal democracy, a regime that is supposed to sanctify a strict separation between State and society. The potentially intrusive nature of these policies therefore requires political decision-makers to ensure their effectiveness.
Historical overview of pronatalist policies
Concerns linked to the decline in the birth rate are nothing new. The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries which tried, via family and pronatalist policies, to revive it. Were they effective? Totalitarian regimes, willingly planning, naturally considered that birth rate issues were the responsibility of the State. Whether it was Stalin’s USSR, Mussolini’s fascist Italy or Hitler’s Nazi Germany, they all implemented pronatalist policies combining coercive and incentive measures.
This is the case of the USSR in the 1930s. After the birth rate rose from 42.2 births per 1000 inhabitants in 1928 to 31 births per 1000 inhabitants in 1932, Stalin decreed, in 1936, the ban on abortion. He also implemented economic incentives: women with more than seven children received 2,000 rubles per year per child. According to David L. Hoffmann, historian at Ohio State University and specialist in Stalinism, “the effect of these measures on the birth rate was zero, on the other hand, clandestine abortion networks were quickly formed , often leading to dramatic situations for the women who used it.” For the researcher, the conclusion is clear: “no state has ever succeeded in sustainably increasing the birth rate, but the negative consequences of these policies are very real”.
However, many liberal democracies have implemented pronatalist policies, with results that some consider positive. In France, the moment of the “Trente glorieuses de la Fertility” (1944-1973) appears to be a textbook case of effective pronatalist policies. A set of measures were taken, which denote a desire to increase the birth rate and to promote a certain conception of the family: establishment of Social Security in 1945, establishment of a Family Code in 1939, establishment of a High Population Committee as well as a National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED). In his What do I know? on demography (PUF, 2010), the demographer Jean-Claude Chesnais attributes the “vigor of the resumption of fertility to the aftermath of the war […] at least in large part, to the policy which was implemented on the eve and aftermath of the Second World War”. Between 1946 and 1954, France experienced a birth rate above 20% which contrasted with the demographic torpor from before the war.
Similar economic incentives were implemented in the Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR) from 1976 and in Sweden from 1983. The GDR’s pronatalist policy consisted of making life easier for young parents through paid leave. parental or salary compensation from the second child, the densification of the nursery network and the granting of loans to young households to promote access to housing. The case of Sweden is, according to Chesnais, another model of success since the country has succeeded in reconciling feminism and pronatalism. Indeed, according to the demographer, Sweden “is the only advanced country where fertility increased significantly during the years 1980-2004” thanks in particular to an “avant-garde social policy” such as the creation of a parental allowance well-paid long-term education from the first child.
More recently, Viktor Orban’s Hungary adopted a pronatalist family policy whose stated objective is to reduce the effects of miscegenation to “save” white and Catholic Europe. Newlyweds can, for example, obtain a reduced-rate loan of 10 million forints (around 26,000 euros) for the purchase of a new home and even obtain reimbursement of monthly payments from three babies onwards. Let us also cite the exemption from income tax for mothers of four children or state subsidies for transport. In 2010, while the Hungarian birth rate was 1.2 children per woman, it increased to 1.6 in 2022.
A contested effectiveness…
These few examples, at first glance, suggest the probable effectiveness of redistributive pronatalist policies. Reality is more complex. According to the historian and demographer at INED Hervé Le Bras, “natalism has proven to be ineffective”. Indeed, “econometric studies have shown that there is very little relationship, in the short and medium term, between family policies and fertility”.
Concerning the GDR in the 1970s and Sweden in the 1980s, the demographer qualifies the impact of pronatalist policies on the observed increase in fertility: “in both cases, this increase is the consequence of a windfall effect In Sweden, the growth in fertility was short-lived before returning to its usual level. This can be explained by the fact that couples brought forward births to take advantage of the advantages of the family policies put in place, without this has an impact on the final size of families. In Hungary, despite the scale of pronatalist policies, the birth rate fell from 1.61 in 2021 to 1.54 in 2022. Note, however, that this drop is less significant than in other Eastern countries without family policy.
During the Thirty Glorious Years, a baby boom also occurred in many countries lacking proactive family policies. For Hervé Le Bras, this increase is mainly explained by the decline of the one-child model: “in the interwar period and at the Liberation, a lot of work was done, particularly with the Langevin Wallon map (Editor’s note: ambitious project for a global reform of teaching and the French educational system developed in 1946-1947), to criticize the only child. We were told that having only one child would be a bad thing, because he would risk being bored and lacking social relationships. The idea gradually took root in people’s minds. The baby boom was fueled by the increase in families with two and three children. France today, 1945-2020 (Folio History, 2022), historians Christian Delacroix and Michelle Zancarini Fournel share the same observation. If the break with the one-child model “of course owes a lot to the family policy of the immediate post-war […]more fundamentally, it signals a decisive psychological upheaval marked by confidence in the present and the future, in a material context of daily life which nevertheless, at the end of the war, was, for a majority of these women, difficult.
If birth rates are necessarily influenced by economic variables, the fact remains that their evolution is the result of a multiplicity of factors that remain difficult to distinguish. As the case of the baby boom in France shows, cultural factors play a significant role. Today, the lengthening of the duration of studies, the emancipation of women, the evolution of family values under the effect of individualization are all causes which influence the family choices of individuals.
Insufficient announcements
Since 2014, we have witnessed the end of the French demographic exception, characterized by demographic growth based on a positive natural balance (difference between the number of live births and the number of deaths calculated most often during a year ) rather than on a positive migration balance (difference between the number of people who entered a territory – immigrants – and the number of people who left – emigrants). Understanding this phenomenon still eludes specialists. Hervé Le Bras, however, tells us that “movements in fertility indices are very sensitive to the average age of mothers having their first child”. The increase in the age at which women have their first child (23 and a half years in 1974, 29 years today) therefore necessarily has a downward influence on the number of children per family.
In this context, Emmanuel Macron’s pronatalist announcements, in addition to being imprecise and lacking a cost-benefit analysis, seem doomed to ineffectiveness. According to Le Bras, they are even “grotesque”: “I have never seen such amateurism”. As for the measures on fertility consultations, it is highly uncertain whether the drop in birth rate can be explained by an increase in infertility, since according to Inserm, only 10% of couples remain infertile after two years of trying. For a pronatalist policy to be effective in the long term, and thus avoid the simple windfall effect, economic incentives are not enough. Due to the multiplicity of factors which exert an influence on the choices of individuals, political decision-makers are undoubtedly condemned to carry out reforms which go beyond the framework of simple birth rate policies.
The scale of the task is as dizzying as it excites planning instincts well anchored in French political culture, of which the expressions “demographic rearmament” and “grand plan against infertility” are the most obvious expression. brilliant. The complexity of the demographic problem would, however, be an opportunity to encourage legislative Malthusianism. The President of the Republic would therefore be well advised to finally dare to shake up the French social model, which responds to each problem with new spending. Rather than promoting costly, potentially intrusive pronatalist policies with uncertain results, why not imagine a loosening of the weight of the State? This would reduce the tax burden on households, facilitate access to housing, revitalize the French economy and, in turn, perhaps, restore confidence in the future among young couples.