France Crosses Its Historic Demographic Threshold: More Deaths Than Births
In 2025, the natural balance becomes negative in France for the first time since the end of World War II: it is estimated at -6,000. This shift marks France’s entry into a new demographic era. The country thus joins two-thirds of European nations that already record more deaths than births.
On January 1, 2026, the population residing in France is estimated at 69.1 million inhabitants: 66.8 million in metropolitan France and 2.3 million in overseas departments. The population would increase by +0.25% over one year. But this growth is solely due to a migration balance of +176,000 people in 2025.
The Essentials
- Negative natural balance of -6,000: the first time since 1945 that deaths (651,000) exceed births (645,000)
- Fertility at its lowest: 1.56 children per woman in 2025, the lowest level since World War I
- Accelerated aging: baby-boomers are massively reaching ages of high mortality since 2011
- Systemic challenges: demographic dependency ratio that will rise from 37% in 2023 to 54% in 2070
Fertility Collapses Below 1.6 Children Per Woman
The total fertility rate (TFR) stands at 1.56 children per woman in 2025, compared to 1.61 in 2024. The highest point of this index was recorded in 2010, with 2.02 children per woman. This 23% decline over fifteen years places France durably below the generation replacement threshold of 2.1 children per woman.
One must go back to the end of World War I to find a TFR as low as in 2025: in 1918, in metropolitan France, the TFR was 1.56 children per woman, and it had fallen to 1.23 in 1916. This historical comparison reveals the magnitude of the current phenomenon, even if the causes differ radically.
Analysis of the fertility rate by age group shows that the fertility rate for women aged 25 to 29 has declined since 2010, standing at 8.2 children per 100 women in 2025 compared to 12.8 in 2005. Among women aged 35 or older, the fertility rate, which had been rising since the late 1970s, has in turn stopped increasing in recent years. The postponement of the age of motherhood no longer compensates for the decline in fertility among young women.
The Baby Boom Reaches the Age of Mortality
In 2025, the number of deaths in France is estimated at 651,000, up 1.5% compared to 2024. This increase is notably linked to the winter flu epidemic, particularly virulent in January 2025 but also to the aging of the population and “the arrival at high-mortality ages of the large baby-boom generations, born from 1946 to 1974.”
Since 2011, the large baby-boom generations, born between 1946 and 1974, have been progressively reaching high-mortality age brackets. This mechanical phenomenon will exercise sustained pressure on mortality indicators, independent of exceptional health crises. This aging has accelerated since the mid-2010s, with the massive arrival of baby-boomers in older age groups. The oldest among them are now reaching 80 years of age, while those aged 75 or older represent 11.1% of the population, compared to 8.2% in 2006.
Persons aged 65 and older are now as numerous as those under 20 years old, representing respectively 22.2% and 22.5% of the population. In 2006, these rates were respectively 16.4% and 25.1%. This inversion of demographic pyramids is transforming Europe with similar timing in most developed countries.
The Dependency Ratio Explodes
The old-age dependency ratio — the ratio between those over 65 and those aged 20-64 — would rise from 37% in 2023 to 45-50% by 2040, then to 54% in 2070. In 2070, fewer than two working-age people will finance each retiree, compared to 2.7 today.
In 2040, there would be 51 people aged 65 or older per 100 people aged 20 to 64, compared to 37 in 2021. This mechanical deterioration will weigh on all pay-as-you-go pension systems. The pay-as-you-go pension system, based on intergenerational solidarity, is particularly sensitive to these developments. The lengthening of life expectancy and the retirement of large generations increase the number of pensioners faster than that of contributors.
Spending sensitive to aging already represents more than 40% of public expenditure, in strong growth over the past twenty-five years. Pension spending alone reaches 14% of GDP, a level higher than the eurozone average (11.5%). As observed in other sectors, this budgetary pressure forces a rethinking of traditional financing models.
France Is No Longer Europe’s Fertility Exception
For a long time, France was an exception in Europe. For example, Germany has experienced a natural deficit since 1970 and Italy since 1990. With 1.56 children per woman in 2025, France remains more fertile than the European Union average (1.38 children per woman in 2023). But the gap is closing rapidly.
This decline in birth rates is not a French exception but a trend across all developed countries, and even counterintuitively, though less strongly, in the world. France has a historic and ambitious family policy, which allows it to slightly contain the demographic slowdown, but not to reverse it.
Birth rates have been declining for 15 years. A 25% decrease in births over 15 years. And for the first time since the end of World War II, the natural balance becomes negative. That is to say there are more deaths than births in France. This European convergence reveals deep structural causes that transcend national policies.
Economic and Social Challenges
Demographic aging exerts a mechanical effect on labor supply. According to the Court of Auditors, the share of individuals of working age should fall from 55.3% of the population in 2023 to 50% in 2070. This decline potentially reduces the number of active workers able to finance social systems and weighs on growth.
The report emphasizes that needs related to health and dependency will increase significantly from the second half of the 2020s onward. By 2050, the number of dependent people (GIR 1 to 4) should increase from 1.4 to 1.9 million, and that of frail seniors from 2.1 to 3.8 million. Without reform, public spending could increase by 0.85% of GDP, or 80 billion euros.
The massive exit of baby boomers from the labor market has increased labor shortages in many sectors. This scarcity of labor is already affecting the French economy, particularly in personal services and health care. The inflationary pressures resulting from this risk weighing on purchasing power, as in other regions undergoing transformation.
France is entering its post-baby boom demographic transition with a significant challenge: maintaining social cohesion and economic prosperity in a context of accelerated aging. Accelerated population aging, combined with durably low birth rates, will durably transform the labor force profile, the financial balances of Social Security, health and social care needs, and the functioning of the education system. For the Court of Auditors, the key lies in anticipation.