Promoting couples to save the birth rate, the measure that politicians do not dare to think about

On Facebook on January 14, sociologist Julien Damon beat the drum. “YOUR ATTENTION: IMPORTANT ARTICLE” he wrote, sharing an investigation from Financial Times published a few days earlier. Its title? “The Relationship Recession Goes Global.” His thesis? The massive decline in fertility – even in Africa – is linked to the decline in the number of stable couples. A deconjugality from which a decline in birth results. After the «it’s economy, stupid»this is the «it’s love, dumbass» («it's love, stupid»).

By cross-checking data from the International Labor Organization, the “Arab Barometer”, a research network based at Princeton University, and national statistics agencies, journalist John Murdoch demonstrates that since the 2000s, the fall The number of children is due less to the reduced composition of families – fewer children per household – than to the lower number of households. In Finland, for example, couples more often decide to separate than to have a baby, “a radical reversal of the historical norm”. Unprecedented oddity: while in the collective imagination, love is the wealth offered to all…