Population, life expectancy, fertility, birth rate: this Tuesday, January 14, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) presented its latest data on the evolution of the French population. Two factors explain the still sluggish population growth in 2024: higher mortality and a drop in fertility.
France has 68.6 million inhabitants on January 1, 2025, including 2.3 million in overseas territories, an increase of 0.25% over one year. As of January 1, 2023, France represented 15% of the population of the 27-country European Union, and was the second most populous country behind Germany (19%). Together with Italy, Spain and Poland, the next most populous countries, they represented two thirds of the EU population.
In 2024, 646,000 people died in France, or +1.1% compared to 2023. Deaths recorded in 2024 will reach a level 5% higher than in 2019, before the pandemic. An increase linked to the aging of the population, which results in the arrival of people from the generations of baby boomers, born from 1946 to 1974, at ages where mortality is increasing sharply.
Life expectancy is stabilizing at a historically high level. On average, in France, women live 85.6 years and men 80 years. Since the mid-1990s, the gap in life expectancy between women and men has been narrowing: 5.6 years now, compared to 7.1 years in 2004. Life expectancy is, therefore, less and less gendered. . Explanations are given, such as changes in women's lifestyles and their exposure to risk factors (tobacco, alcohol, etc.). In France, as in the EU, more than one person in five is at least 65 years old, compared to just over one person in six in 2005 (21.8%, compared to 16.3%).
Births at their lowest level in almost eighty years. The number of births in France is estimated at 663,000 in 2024, down 2.2% compared to 2023. This is the lowest level observed since the Second World War. Are the wheels of the demographic rearmament so desired by Emmanuel Macron definitively seized up? “The number of births, indicates the INSEE report, depends, on the one hand, on the number of women said to be of childbearing age and, on the other hand, on their fertility. Since 2016, the female population aged 20 to 40 has changed little in number; the drop in births since this date is therefore mainly explained by the decline in fertility” to 1.62 children per woman in 2024. Unheard of since, this time, the end of the First World War. “Changes in mentalities, desire for women to prioritize themselves, anxiety-provoking political and economic climate, uncertainties about the future” : Sylvie Le Minez, head of the demographic and social studies unit at INSEE, discusses the main avenues intended to explain this decline.
Notable fact: the drop observed in June, which shows a very sharp drop in births. A consequence of the anxiety-provoking climate that reigned in France at the time of the dissolution? “A preliminary lead”, procrastinates Sylvie Le Minez, who “will or will not be corroborated in the following months.”
Births, for their part, are occurring later and later: the average age at childbirth is 31.1 years, compared to 29.5 twenty years earlier. Despite everything, France remains the most fertile country in the European Union: 1.62 compared to 1.4 for the European average.
Infant mortality on the rise since 2021. From 3.7 to 4.1 deaths per 1,000 births, or 2,700 children dying before their first birthday. The report adds that“after having declined very sharply during the 20th century, this rate has not fallen since 2005”. A worrying fact, when we know that the infant mortality rate is a key indicator of the health of a population, due to its strong relationship with socio-economic development and the quality of preventive and curative care existing in the country. “It is essential to be able to explore in detail the causes of this increase by having, for example, systematic information on the precise medical and social circumstances of these deaths,” explained Professor Martin Chalumeau, head of the general pediatrics and infectious diseases department at the Necker-Enfants Malades AP-HP hospital, during a study carried out in 2022 with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Possible explanations: later pregnancies, more frequent use of medically assisted procreation are mentioned, with the greatest caution, by INSEE.
Three out of ten children live with only one of their parents. In France, in 2023, 67% of minor children live in a so-called family “traditional”, 23% in a single-parent family (19% with their mother) and 10% in a blended family. “14% of children whose parents are separated live in alternate residences”, et “30% of children live with only one of their parents, slightly more than in 2018,” underlines the report. A situation which exposes them, between lack of resources and overoccupied housing, to more difficulties. In Overseas Territories, single-parent families are twice as common: “More than four out of ten children live in single-parent families with their mother, compared to just under two out of ten in mainland France,” can we read. In large urban centers outside Paris, where the family “traditional” predominates, children live more in single-parent families than in rural areas.
