Always fewer babies are emerging in France. Between January and June, 317,340 babies were born in France, compared to 326,401 in the first half of 2024, the National Institute of Statistics said on Thursday, July 31 (INSEE). Or a 2.2 % drop in the daily number of average births between the two periods.
The six months sold “confirm the trend that has been observed for a while,” commented to the agency France Presse Didier Breton, professor of demography at the University of Strasbourg. “There is no reason for a reversal of the situation to therefore occur the number of annual births promises to be lower than in 2024”. The 2025 calendar year should therefore mark a new one since the end of the Second World War, for the fourth consecutive year.
Down since 2011
The birth rate decreases in all regions over one year, except in the Pays de la Loire (+ 1.1 %) and in Mayotte, (+ 1.3 %). Among the regions with the most births, the decline is-3.8 % in Hauts-de-France,-2.8 % in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and-1.8 % in Île-de-France. Since 2022, the number of births has reached a lower year since the end of the Second World War. In 2023, he went under the symbolic bar of the 700,000. And since 2011, the number of births decreased each year, with the exception of 2021, which experienced a slight rebound after the confinements linked to the COVVI-19. In 2024, he had further fell 2.8 % compared to the previous year: 660,800 newborns had emerged, according to the revised ESSEE estimate.
At the beginning of July, a study by the INED revealed that the desire for a child has clearly decreased in 20 years, which presages a pursuit of the decline in fertility. “We arrive in a new era, where fertility could stabilize or even decrease, but it is unlikely that it goes back in the short term”, in the next five to ten years, said AFP Laurent Toulemon, co-author of the study.
“Birth holidays”
The decline of the birth rate agitates the political class, which is concerned in particular with the future financing of the social protection system, and led President Emmanuel Macron to call for the “demographic rearmament” of the country. The government says it wants to support the birth rate by soon creating a new “birth leave” which could be taken by both parents, with greater financial support than the current parental leave.
In a recent opinion, the National Ethics Committee stressed that it was “imperative” for the company to support couples who encountered difficulties in concretizing their child project, whether socio-economic or biological (infertility problems). He also recalled that it was necessary to respect the personal decision of each to have or not children, a subject which should not be the subject of “social or political pressures”.
Housing crisis and environmental uncertainty
A report by the Academy of Medicine, published in early July, underlined that the birth rate is not just a matter of figures, but “reflects the global state of health of a society, its optimism, its ability to project itself into the future”. Among the “societal” factors that slow down the birth rate, the report of the Academy of Medicine identifies in particular the lack of childcare, the housing crisis or even geopolitical and environmental uncertainties.
In addition to this drop in births, the number of deaths increases it, in connection with the arrival of the numerous generations of the baby boom at ages of high mortality. As a result of the combination of the two phenomena, France has just known for the first time since the end of the Second World War a natural balance of population – the difference between the number of births and deaths – negative over 12 sliding months. From June 2024 to May 2025, there were 822 more deaths than births, according to the analysis by the France Press Agency of data updated on July 31.