Reuters
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France will record more deaths than births in 2025 for the first time since the end of World War II, a development that undermines its longstanding demographic advantage over other European Union countries, official figures showed on Tuesday.
National statistics agency INSEE reported 651,000 deaths and 645,000 births last year, but those numbers have plummeted since the global coronavirus pandemic.
France has traditionally had a stronger demographic than most of Europe, but its aging population and declining birthrate mean it is vulnerable to the demographic strain that is straining the continent’s finances.
According to INSEE, the birth rate fell last year to 1.56 children per woman, the lowest level since World War I and significantly lower than the 1.8 children expected in the Pensions Advisory Council’s pension funding forecast.
In 2023, the latest year for which comparisons with the EU were made, France’s birth rate was 1.65, the second highest after Bulgaria’s 1.81.
Demographic changes will return public spending to pandemic-era highs in the coming years, while eroding the tax base, the National Audit Office warned last month.
“Labor market tensions and workforce problems are likely to increase rapidly in the coming years, given the retirement of the large generation born in the 1960s,” said Philippe Crevel, an economist at the Cercles d’Epargnes think tank.
Despite deaths outnumbering births, France’s population rose slightly last year to 69.1 million due to net migration, bringing the population to 176,000, according to INSEE estimates.
Last year, average life expectancy reached record highs of 85.9 years for women and 80.3 years for men, but the proportion of people aged 65 and over rose to 22%, almost matching the number of people under 20.
