The situation is beginning to worry the leadership of the State. Last May, Emmanuel Macron raised the alarm during a meeting at the Elysée. He even asked Alexis Kohler, secretary general of the presidency, to present proposals from the ministries. Objective: stop the hemorrhage of births in the country.
Because there is an emergency. This Thursday, INSEE announced a new drop in the number of births in the country. -7.2% in the first eight months of the year, or 35,000 fewer babies compared to the same period in 2022.
Since 2011, the decline has been inexorable. The country has gone from 830,000 annual births in a decade to 726,000 in 2022 and perhaps this year we will fall below 700,000. Something unheard of since 1946. At this rate, it is only a matter of years before the number of deaths exceeds the number of births. Demographers anticipate it for 2026.
Demographers are testing
How did France, relatively safe from this phenomenon and even experiencing a mini “baby boom” in the 2000s, lose the desire to have children?
Demographers are a bit helpless when it comes to explaining this baby crash phenomenon. What we can say is that the average age of motherhood has continued to rise over the past two decades. We thus went from 29.4 years in 2003 to more than 31 years in 2022. It is also among women aged 25 to 34 where the birth rate is falling most sharply.
A delay that is explained by the lengthening of the duration of studies, the fact that couples form later, take longer to stabilize in their professional lives… However, when we have children later, we shorten the period of fertility and therefore we have fewer children.
Added to this are psychological phenomena that are more difficult to quantify such as eco-anxiety, fear for the future or the desire to limit the environmental footprint that can influence the desire to have a child.
“Our children, our retirements”
But is a less populated country so serious? Not in the short term. But over time, a declining population can have significant economic consequences for the country. It is no coincidence that many countries like Italy or South Korea, faced with the same problem, are increasing their pronatalist policies.
Fewer births ultimately means a contraction of the labor market (hence less wealth produced and less redistribution), a possible downturn in the housing market (we move and build when a child arrives), but it is also a pension system in deep imbalance.
Without having a balanced age pyramid, the country will have more difficulty financing its pensions in the future. If people do not have children for economic reasons, their life choices sometimes have unintended consequences.
shy clues
Does the government have any ideas to increase the birth rate? Policies in this area rarely bear fruit. Promoting the birth rate means influencing the most intimate decisions of individuals and changing social norms about the number of children that are deeply rooted in the collective unconscious.
All the more difficult since the executive’s proposals currently seem very timid. In fact, there is a provision of €6 billion over 6 years to provide 200,000 additional childcare solutions by 2030. But that’s it.
On behalf of the Minister of Solidarity and Families, Aurore Bergé, we would like to make parental leave more attractive by significantly increasing the benefit (429 euros per month), but reducing its duration. A proposal that is being discussed but is not included in the 2024 Social Security financing bill.
We are therefore far from the general mobilization desired by Emmanuel Macron, with more ambitious tax incentive measures, for example. Pronatalist policies are like the desire to have a child; The risk is that if you wait too long, you run the risk of it being too late.
Source: BFM TV
