The French birth rate last year hit its lowest level since the end of World War I.
According to a report from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), 663,000 babies were born in France in 2024, a 2.2 percent decline from 2023 and the lowest since 1946. The fertility rate also dropped to 1.62 children per woman from 1.66 in 2023, the lowest recorded since the end of World War I, which is far below the 2.1 level of replacement.
The country is facing such troubling rates even though French President Emmanuel Macron introduced a “demographic rearmament” program last year in order to increase births in the country.
“Our France will also be stronger by relaunching its birth rate. Until recently, we were a country for which this was a strength...[I]t's been less true in recent years,” Macron said at the time.
The fertility rate for France is slightly higher than the European Union as a whole, with the latest for the EU being 1.46 in 2022. However, the French National Union of Family Associations (UNAF) stated that, over the last two years, the French rate has dropped faster than the majority of other EU countries, and that the causes of the declining birth rate were due to economic, housing and social factors, rather than a “lack of desire to have children.”
Cécilia Creuzet, a co-founder of a French parental app, found that, for the app’s users, especially women, a work-life home balance was a major factor. As well, more than half of the app’s users reported that the “climate crisis” led to the lessening of their desire to have more kids.
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