The year 2025 promises to be a historic turning point in French demographics. For the first time since World War II, the number of births likely to be lower than the number of deaths. In 2024, the natural balance of our country will barely be positive, at 17,000 people. Births continue to decline, going from around 850,000 per year in the mid-1970s to less than 660,000 today. Deaths have increased sharply since 2005 when there were around 520,000, compared to nearly 650,000 today, for a mechanical reason: the aging of the population. The baby boom generation is approaching 80, an age already exceeded by 6.7 million people.
This trend is not unique to France. It is the world as a whole which is undergoing great aging, which should reassure our dwindling ecologists who see every human being as a potential polluter. Their sad dream is about to be fulfilled: we are having fewer and fewer children and we are dying more and more. Tremendous ! But it is difficult to see the point of fighting against global warming if humans desert our planet. It’s even frankly demotivating.
No policy succeeds in reversing the trend
Another reason which should delight the decliners: no country has found the martingale to increase the birth rate. Lowering taxes on large families, opening daycare centers and building housing are supposed to “allow” adults to have children. This in no way means that they do. Julien Damon (The birth rate battlesEditions de l’aube, 2024) humorously proposes to facilitate access to dating applications based on an unstoppable argument: more and more, it is blended couples who have children, a way of celebrating a new love after a previous union. The argument is stimulating but Damon himself is not fooled: making Tinder a free public service will not be enough to reverse the French demographic decline. Let us therefore take note of the fact that no policy has ever succeeded in countering this trend and let us think about the adaptations necessary to ensure that our businesses remain dynamic and our welfare state sustainable.
Concerning our social finances, may these data from INSEE make it clear to employee unions, the left and the National Rally that any attempt to lower the average retirement age would be a crime against the interest of the country. . We can always dream, but reality is harsh. Despite the 2023 reform, the basic system is already in deficit. François Bayrou was right to emphasize that the “real” deficit of the regime was much greater than the figures announced, to the extent that the State mobilizes billions of euros each year to support distribution at arm’s length, in the form of premiums or subsidies. The truth is that demographics force us to introduce a dose of capitalization as quickly as possible, in order to ensure that our country’s pension system is no longer based solely on demographics but also on the performance of the financial markets. .
The advent of humanoids
On the business side, the demographic problem is twofold. It is first and foremost managerial. In 1975, the median age in France was 32 and a half. He is now 42 years old. It’s a change of universe. Companies that are reluctant to recruit people over the age of 50 are paradoxically living in the past. The firm of the future is one that will have employees aged 25 and 65 living together in its teams. Magnificent human challenge, which disqualifies managers clinging to the idea that the only people worthy of work are under 45 years old.
The second problem is technological. 2025 will be the year of the rise in commercial power of humanoids, products of the hybridization of artificial intelligence and robotics. In countries that refuse immigration, sectors that struggle to recruit will be forced to invest in these new machines. Young, old and humanoids will have to learn to work together.
Nicolas Bouzou, economist and essayist, is director of the consulting firm Astères
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