Since the end of the First World War, French couples have never had so few children. The fertility rate fell to 1.62 babies per woman in 2024, according to INSEE statistics published Tuesday. Far from the 2.1 needed to have positive demographics.
This birth crisis and this aging of the population are not without posing many problems. In his book The empty swings (L’Observatoire), which comes out this Wednesday, the economist Maxime Sbaihi draws up a grim observation for the economy of a population which is no longer able to renew itself. For 20 Minuteshe returns to this age wall that France is beginning to face.
A few years ago, France was still presented as the European example of a positive birth rate. How can we explain that births collapsed so quickly?
We are only just beginning to realize that births are declining, but in reality, the decline began in 2011. Since that year, they have fallen by more than 20%. The French demographic exception is dead and buried, we are overtaken by a phenomenon of declining birth rate from which almost all rich countries suffer. Many factors are at work, but I would point to the disappearance of growth, the housing and childcare crisis as well as a job that no longer pays. So many factors that prevent young households from carrying out their family plans.
The real estate crisis is actually little mentioned. However, buying a home often preceded a childhood project for older generations…
The spectacular rise in property prices has halved the purchasing power of younger generations. In large cities, they have lost around twenty square meters compared to generations who bought before the 2000s. That’s one or two fewer rooms to accommodate children!
The real estate crisis is a generational break, as evidenced by the growing number of near-thirties who are forced to still live with roommates or with their parents at ages when the latter were moving into houses with gardens and children.
On a purely economic level, what are the consequences of this decline in birth rates?
There are immediate economic consequences, namely a shortage of young people and therefore of the workforce. It is already causing tensions in many sectors of the labor market and causing the economy to run at a sluggish pace.
The corollary of the declining birth rate is the accelerated aging of our population which is causing public accounts to redden, because an aging population puts pressure on retirement and health expenditure to the detriment of others, in particular investment in ‘future.
Finally, an aging society which is having fewer and fewer children is seeing its culture and its horizon change. How surprising is it that “it was better before” has replaced “tomorrow will be better”? Raymond Aron spoke frankly of a “state of mind of abdication”.
Doctors, teachers… Many professions will experience a large wave of retirements in the coming years. Will the low number of assets pose a problem?
We have had to combat excessively high unemployment for a long time, and you will have noticed that it has disappeared from public debate. Today’s problem is that of a general shortage of labor that we feel almost everywhere, in medical deserts, among restaurateurs desperate for cooks, in transport lacking drivers, behind all these closed counters, in nursing homes and daycare centers with daily understaffing. We already lack young people to run the economy and finance our social model, and that is not going to get better.
Does the birth rate also have a bad political impact? We see that Japan, which has the oldest population in the world, pursues very conservative policies.
The risk is to be dragged down the slippery slope of gerontocracy, in which public decision-makers prefer to satisfy the interests of an older population that has become inactive and the majority at the polls rather than investing in youth and childhood. Collective choices come to favor the next election to the detriment of the next generation.
The example of pensions is striking: they have become our main item of public expenditure, their financing suffocates assets and weighs down public accounts, but no political party wants to risk asking for efforts from retirees who are nevertheless on average less poor. than the rest of the population.
Over the last two years, pensions have increased faster than the salaries that finance them! It is economically untenable, but sadly logical electorally.
How can we resolve this problem of declining birth rates? Are there solutions elsewhere that have worked?
In the book, I take a demographic tour of the world to see how countries facing the threat of a declining birth rate respond. Three paths are emerging: procreation, immigration, robotization. The path to procreation is as popular as it is ineffective, powerless to replenish an active population slowly dwindling after decades spent below the threshold of generational renewal.
The route of immigration is a pragmatic but hypersensitive and temporary patch, it treats the economic symptoms of the decline in birth rates without curing it.
The path to robotization has undeniable economic potential but (still) insufficient to satisfy all-too-human needs. We must therefore play on all three counts!