The number of births continued to decline in France in 2025. The fertility rate, at 1.56 children per woman, reached its lowest level since 1918. It is true that most of France’s neighbors are faring even worse, and France still holds its – rather relative – status as a champion of birth rates. This decline is a universal and long-term phenomenon, with explanations that have shifted over time.
The initial phase, which has been the most studied, is that of the demographic transition, marked by the shift from a regime of high mortality and fertility to one of low mortality and fertility. France was already an exception, having started its demographic transition in the 18th century, before other countries. Without this early transition, some economists estimate, France’s population would today stand at 250 million.
How, then, can we explain that France – which had one of the lowest fertility rates at the start of the 20th century – later became a European champion of birth rates? Claudia Goldin, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics, attributes this to the slower pace of economic growth during the “trente glorieuses” (the thirty years of postwar prosperity), which was weaker in France than in its neighbors, according to her study Babies and the macroeconomy. The countries with the lowest birth rates today (Italy, Spain, South Korea, Japan, with rates ranging from 0.7 for South Korea to 1.2 for Italy) all experienced rapid economic growth after World War II. Social change did not keep pace, which, according to Goldin, created a cultural conflict and a “war of the sexes.”
Far-right appeal
Economic growth and the opportunities it creates in education and financial independence have allowed women to break free from domestic and patriarchal constraints. Men have been much less enthusiastic about abandoning rigid gender norms, of which they are the main beneficiaries. This asymmetry has led to the rejection of marriage, motherhood and domestic servitude. In South Korea, for example, more than one third of women born between 1976 and 1985 have no children.
You have 47.82% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.