France’s fertility index falling but still among the highest in the EU

INED confirms the drop in the French birth rate in 2023. Last year 678,000 children were born in France, a figure down 6.6% compared to 2022. “We have to go back, excluding the war period, to the years 1936-1938 to record such a low number,” the report indicates. In the first half of 2024, this decline is confirmed even if the rate of decline has significantly reduced.
This historic decline in the number of births is the direct consequence of that in fertility. The French total fertility index (TCI) is, as with the birth rate, at its lowest level since the post-war period. In ten years, it has fallen by 0.43 pointsgoing from 2.1 children per woman in 2012 to 1.67 children per woman in 2023.

In January 2024, President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted to put in place “a major plan to combat infertility”, believing that its increase was the “taboo of the century”. He notably announced the creation of “birth leave” and called for “demographic rearmament“.

Compared to its European neighbors, France is still an exception regarding fertility. However, in 2023, it had to leave the place of the EU country with the highest fertility index in favor of Bulgaria. Fertility in the latter, whose TFR has been increasing for three years, reaches around 1.8 children per woman. EU average fertility, which was 1.46 children per woman in 2022, is expected to approach 1.40 in 2023, its historic low.

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