2024-01-22 18:44:07
For Emmanuel Macron, this is common sense: France will be “stronger by the revival of its birth rate”. Explicitly associating demography with power, the Head of State intends to reverse a continuous decline in births in France, which in 2023 fell to the lowest since 1945, with a battery of measures intended to fuel a “demographic rearmament” et presented Tuesday January 16 during his press conference. The contribution of a dynamic birth rate to what is at the heart of his ideological software – growth – is obvious to him. An analysis widely shared among political leaders and public opinion, for whom the decline in fertility is undoubtedly one of the most striking symptoms of decline.
“The idea that demographics are weakening in France is fairly supported in public opinion, even if there are disagreements on the causes and remedies,” confirms Bruno Cauvrai, researcher at the CNRS and the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po, who recalls that “the French demographic exception, with its dynamic birth rate, was a reason for pride”. Demographics “is not a reason for concern in itself but it is a facet of this feeling of French pessimism, with a difficulty in projecting oneself into a positive future, with the idea that we lived better before and that for the next generation, it will be harder.”
Among political leaders, the Head of State is not the only one to consider that the birth rate is an essential element for creating economic growth. Right and left have historically shared a pronatalist discourse, both for societal reasons – the family being perceived as a factor of political stability – and economic ones, implicitly linking the vigor of the economy, the creation of wealth or innovation to the youth of the country. A consensus weakened by the rise of individualism from the 1960s, then with the questioning of the universality of family policy by the left, during the presidency of François Hollande.
“Lower potential growth”
“Fewer births means less work and less consumption, it means economic weakening, decline, considers Bruno Retailleau, leader of the Republicans in the Senate. A country whose natural balance is decreasing is a country whose potential growth – which is correlated to the labor supply – is lower. » The child is in his eyes “a belief in the future”and remains “the best solution to prolong ourselves, we who are mortals”. An analysis that we find in the majority, the Renaissance deputy for Val-de-Marne Mathieu Lefèvre saying for example ” very worried ” of “the slow erosion of demography throughout Europe”.
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