A new record. After a marked drop in 2023, the number of births in France continued to fall in the first nine months of 2024, Insee confirmed on Friday. Between January and September, it fell by 2.7% compared with the same period the previous year.
This decline is slowing down, but comes after a sharp drop in 2023. That year, the number of births fell by 6.6%, dropping below the symbolic 700,000 mark for the first time since the end of the Second World War. According to Insee, 677,800 babies were born in France in 2023. This decline can be explained by multiple factors.
War, inflation, uncertainty
Catherine Scornet, a lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille, told AFP: “To project yourself into parenthood, you need to be filled with hope, and the current climate of uncertainty can weigh heavily” on a couple’s decision to have a child. The context of war in Ukraine and the Middle Eastas well as inflation and economic difficulties can influence the choice of whether or not to have a child.
The stall in births in 2023 led President Emmanuel Macron to call for “an increase in the birth rate”. demographic rearmament the country’s “demographic an outcry in feminist circles and the left, who saw it as an attempt to control women’s bodies. The head of state had announced measures to boost the birth rate but these reform projects were brought to a halt by the dissolution of the National Assembly in June.
Realizing your potential other than by becoming a parent
The drop-off in 2023 is “part of a long-term trend”, notes the French National Statistics Institute in a study published on Thursday, confirming the figures announced in January. Since 2010, the number of births has fallen every year, with the exception of 2021, which saw a slight rebound in the context of the health crisis.
Why have the French been having fewer and fewer children over the past decade? Firstly, the number of women between the ages of 20 and 40, i.e. of childbearing age, has fallen. More importantly, these smaller generations are having fewer children. “We’re seeing a change in people’s aspirations when it comes to reproduction: today, people can realize their potential in ways other than by becoming mothers or fathers,” comments Catherine Scornet. “Graduated women are more likely to project themselves outside motherhood.
Fewer couples with three children
Insee also notes that in 2023, for the first time since 2010, the drop in births will affect women of all ages, including the oldest. In concrete terms, “there will be an increase in the number of people who have no childrenwhich can be linked to less social pressure to have children,” Didier Breton, associate researcher at the Institut national d’études démographiques and professor at the University of Strasbourg, told AFP.
In addition, “fewer couples than in the past are moving from two to three children, probably because of a choice linked to material comfort”, he adds. The high number of families with three children was previously a French peculiarity, he says. France is “becoming a European country like any other”.
France’s fertility rate remains the highest in the EU
In 2023, the decline in the number of births in France was greater than the EU average (-5.5%). Last year, the number of newborns fell in 22 out of 27 EU countries. The decline was particularly pronounced in all western EU countries. It rose from -1.3% on average per year between 2019 and 2022 to -5.7% between 2022 and 2023. It has also increased in eastern EU countries, rising from -4.5% on average per year between 2019 and 2022 to -9.3 between 2022 and 2023.
France’s fertility rate remains the highest in the European Union, at 1.79 children per woman in 2022, the latest year for which this data is available. Although it is falling, it remains well above the EU average of 1.46.