For the first time since 1945, France recorded more deaths than births over a year. Between May 2024 and May 2025, 651,000 people died, against 650,000 newborns who have emerged. This results in a “negative natural balance” of 800 people over the last twelve months.
It is the economist of the OFCE François Geerolf who alerted to this historic tilting, a cross moment between the curves of the birth rate and mortality.
A mortality from the covid
In the decades which followed the Second World War, mortality remained relatively constant with 540,000 to 570,000 deaths per year, according to INSEE data. This stability is explained in particular by a still young population and the continuous progress of medicine and hygiene.
In the early 2000s, the trend began to inflate itself, except in 2004 where France recorded around 520,000 deaths, a historically low point. As early as 2006, deaths went upwards, in particular under the effect of the aging of the generations of the baby boom.
In the space of fifteen years, France recorded nearly 120,000 additional deaths per year. A structural increase that seasonal epidemics and heat waves sometimes come to amplify.
The 2020s that mark a more brutal break. The COVVI-19 pandemic causes significant excess mortality, with nearly 669,000 deaths recorded in 2021, a record since the Second World War. Even if mortality fell slightly in 2023, it remains clearly above the pre-crisis levels. In 2024, according to INSEE data, France counted 646,000 deaths, a figure still high result of the continuation of the aging of the population.
As few births as in 1945
The number of births in mainland France has only been down for fifty years. In May 2025, the number of deliveries recorded in one year was 650,400, according to INSEE data. A number approaching the point of 1945 with only 645,800 births identified. The end of the Second World War subsequently trained a “baby boom”. In 1947, the number of births had jumped to 870,400 births.
The birth rate was reached in 1971, with nearly 880,000 births. The number was then not descended below 800,000 per year before 1975. Then the birth rate began to erode. A decrease linked to the decrease in the number of children per woman, mothers waiting more before their first pregnancy.
France then experienced some rare occasional increases in the number of births, notably in 1980, 1981 and 2010 where the 800,000 birth mark was again crossed. But the decline of the birth rate remains the substantive trend, with almost 20 % less births today than in 2010.
A European trend
The natural balance has long been strongly positive in France before eroding from the 1980s. Several scenarios announced more or less distant dates for France to switch to a negative natural balance. François Geerolf recalls that scientific projections were rather 2027 as a pivotal year for such a reversal.
According to the projections of the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), this inversion of the natural balance is called upon to increase in the years to come. It could reach an annual natural deficit of more than 250,000 people by 2060 if current trends continue. This development poses today major challenges: funding for pensions, adaptation of the health system, territorial planning, and family policy.
In the European Union, the natural balance has already been in red since 2012. Countries like Germany, Spain and Italy are already experiencing a significant decline in their population. In total in 2023, 20 EU countries out of 27 presented a negative natural balance. Belgium displayed a zero balance, while only Cyprus, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Sweden always recorded a positive balance.