Fertility in the Face of the Environmental Crisis

This article is published in partnership with CNRS Le Journal.

In France, as across much of the world, people are having fewer children. In 2025, 645,000 babies were born in France – 24% fewer than in 2010, the most recent peak in births, according to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee)¹ . The total fertility rate, which stood at 2.0 children per woman in 2014, fell to 1.56 in 2025, the lowest level since the end of the First World War.

This decline is evident across Europe, where the average fertility rate is around 1.4 children per woman, and more broadly across high-income countries, as well as an increasing number of middle-income nations. In France, people say they want fewer children – particularly those belonging to the younger generations – with a growing share saying they intend to have no children or just one. Over the past 20 years, the number of children under-30s say they would like to have has fallen by 0.6 on average: from 2.5 to 1.9 among women and from 2.3 to 1.8 among men. 

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France's population continued to grow slowly, by around 0.25%, and the country still recorded a positive natural increase in 2024, with roughly 17,000 more births than deaths. In 2025, however, natural increase turned negative for the first time since the Second World War, with around 6,000 more deaths than births. Declining birth rates have now become a prominent concern in political discourse: in early 2024, President Emmanuel Macron called for a "demographic rearmament," presenting a revival in the birth rate as one of the pillars of France's national "power."

Anxiety: the enemy of fertility?

So, what lies behind the fall in fertility rates? The answer is of course multifaceted, but it appears to be linked to a range of unfavourable social and economic conditions. A United Nations study investigating the barriers to having children across 14 countries found that respondents most often cited economic difficulties: financial constraints (39%), unemployment or job insecurity (21%), housing problems (19%), and difficulties accessing childcare (12%). The unequal distribution of domestic work between women and men was also cited, by 13% of women and 8% of men.