Fewer births, fewer deaths, improving life expectancy… INSEE figures describe an aging France

678 000 bébés sont nés en 2023, en France. Midi Libre – SYLVIE CAMBON

INSEE statistics, published on Tuesday, paint the portrait of an aging France, which has not had so few children since 1946.

This is unheard of since the end of World War II. France recorded fewer than 700,000 births in 2023, the lowest level since 1946, shows the annual demographic report published Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee).

678,000 babies were born in France last year, according to the National Institute of Statistics, i.e. 6.6% less than in 2022 and almost 20% less than in 2010, year of the last peak in births. The decline in the birth rate is confirmed and above all it is accelerating. Births have been fewer in France each year since 2011, with the exception of the rebound in 2021, a year marked by confinements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. A phenomenon which has become more pronounced in 2023.

The end of a French exception

The fertility indicator stands at 1.68 children per woman (compared to 1.79 in 2022). It has never been so low, there too, since the war, except in 1993 and 1994. It is the end of a French exception in Europe, even if the country keeps, all the same , the highest total fertility indicator (1.53 in Europe).

"If the fertility indicator settles permanently below 1.8 children per woman, we will find ourselves in the situation of a population which remains constant or which declines a little& quot;, underlines Laurent Toulemon, fertility specialist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), in Le Monde.

More than one in five French people is at least 65 years old

Struck by the purchasing power crisis, plunged into an anxiety-provoking climate accentuated by international crises and the increasingly visible effects of climate change, sometimes engaged in other life choices, French women are making children growing older and older, 31 years on average in 2023, compared to 29.5 years twenty years earlier. Or simply don’t plan to become a mother. Infertility is also progressing.

In this general context, "we begin to have fairly low fertility rates between the ages of 30 and 34, whereas, until now, the This phenomenon mainly affected age groups under 30, continues the demographer.

Fewer deaths

The number of marriages remains stable at the same time: 235,000 heterosexual couples and 7,000 homosexual couples got married in 2023, with a catch-up effect observed since the pandemic.

At the same time, the number of deaths is decreasing, after three years of high mortality linked to heatwaves and epidemics. France recorded, in 2023, 631,000 deaths, or 44,000 fewer than in 2022. The natural surplus, that is to say the surplus of births compared to deaths, is , at the same time, the lowest since the post-war period (47,000).

Net migration increases, conversely, slightly: it is 183,000 people in 2023, compared to 161,000 a year earlier, according to provisional data.

Life expectancy is recovering

But, above all, life expectancy at birth is recovering in the country: it reaches 85.7 years for women and, for the first time, the symbolic bar of 80 years for men.

Life expectancy at age 60 is increasing sharply and exceeds its 2019 level, at 27.9 years for women and 23.7 years for men. Those over 75 now represent more than 10% of the French population and 21.5% of residents are 65 or over. As of January 1, 2024, France had 68.4 million inhabitants, an increase of 0.3% over one year, in an increasingly aging country.

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