(Bloomberg) — France’s demographic decline resumed in 2022, highlighting the challenge the country faces as it wrestles over how to overhaul a pension system under strain from an aging population.
(Bloomberg) — France’s demographic decline resumed in 2022, highlighting the challenge the country faces as it wrestles over how to overhaul a pension system under strain from an aging population.
The number of birth dropped to 723,000, the lowest level in any year since World War II, according to statistics agency Insee. The annual count of newborns in France has been volatile recently, with a decline in 2020 as couples delayed family plans at the start of the Covid pandemic, followed by a rebound in 2021. Before that, the number had been in decline since 2015.
The data come as labor unions have called for strikes on Thursday to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to bolster the pension system by raising the minimum retirement age by two years to 64, which the government says is financially necessary. The French system is particularly vulnerable to deficits as payments to the growing number of retired people depend directly on contributions from workers.
Statistics agency Insee said the trend of declining births is mainly due to women having fewer children on average since the number of women between 20 and 40, the most common childbearing age range, has changed little since 2016.
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