It can be one of the most important crises that our country knows. For fifteen years, France has entered a demographic winter that will alter our economy.
663,000 births recorded in 2024. It is 2.2 % less than in 2023 and 21.5 % less than in 2010. In ten years, fertility in France has gone from 2.0 to 1.6 children per woman, it is simple: we have never made so few babies since 1945.
And to believe the latest ICED study, this birth rate crisis is not ready to fall. In women under 30, the average number of children desired decreased by 2.5 to 1.9 in 20 years.
Fear of economic future, fear of the climate future, but also to a family model that evolves, sometimes to the detriment of the raising of children. In 1998, the ideal number of children was 2.7 per family. Today is 2.3. The type of four people was a floor … it became a roof.
Obviously, all this has important consequences in our economy. Consequences that are already beginning to feel.
At the macroeconomic level: in the last financial bill, Bercy reduced France’s growth potential in a room, only 1.3% to 1%. France is in the process of Japanese. The Asian archipelago has been in an economic crisis for thirty years since its active population began to fall.
1.3 contributing per retiree in 20 years
In the social: we already know the problems of financing our pensions. There are about 1.7 contributing today to a retiree. In 20 years, this proportion will have fallen to 1.3. In fact, everything is social security financing what is in danger. Less young are less contributions, more old people are more expenses. The security deficit is already a tangible reality: 25 billion this year.
Even politically, change is important. For the first time, those over 50 became 2025 in the electoral corpus (51.6%).
What solutions reverse the trend? Three ways according to the essayist Maxime Sbaihi in his last work Empty balances (Homensis).
Procreation: rebuild babies for native policies, but never really worked.
Immigration: but we see the increase in tensions throughout Europe on the subject.
And finally robotization, automation of the economy: what is happening in the United States and Japan, but what other questions ask.
How to finance a system that keeps aging? It’s time to think about it.
Source: BFM TV
