Badaboum. The number of births recorded a historic drop of 13% in January compared to January 2020. An INSEE study published Thursday reveals that only 53,900 babies were born for the first month of 2021, a decrease unprecedented in France since 1975 and after the baby boom. The figure is particularly striking since the toddlers of January were a priori conceived around March 2020 and the arrival of the first restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic in France. The drop was already 7% in December, which “Leaves little doubt about the important role played by the context of the pandemic on this development” according to INSEE. Opinion shared by Arnaud Régnier-Loilier, research director at the National Institute of Demographic Studies, in particular on contemporary fertility behaviors in France.
At first glance, we are tempted to link this sharp drop in birth rates to the Covid-19 pandemic, is this relevant?
I think so. Some people had envisioned a baby boom a little bit during the lockdown because the couples were going to stay together and they would have nothing else to do but children! But that was a bit of a far-fetched assumption, even if it’s easier to tell with hindsight. Because the context is completely new. There is both the economic crisis: the confinement has generated a lot of concerns for many people about their future prospects. And then there is the health crisis and the concern it generates which also has an impact on fertility. So it’s not very surprising to see such a shock on births nine months later.
How does the health aspect of the crisis have an impact on fertility?
Influenza epidemics or heatwaves, for example, generally lead to fewer births. This kind of phenomenon tends to decrease sexual activity, fertility may be lower, and then there may also be an increase in fetal mortality. Difficult to comment on Covid-19 because I am not an epidemiologist and the people most affected are mainly elderly people who are no longer of childbearing age. But there are fears related to the virus that may have had an impact on fertility. There has surely been a fear among some couples that the disease will be transmitted from mother to child, especially when they did not know much about the virus. Moreover, couples with children had to take care of it while continuing to work remotely. They were therefore not so available, all against a background of fears about the future, which is a determining factor in fertility declines. Where is the world going? What will the future be made of? This ties in with classic questions in times of economic crisis. Studies show it: with almost every economic crisis, fertility drops. When you are unemployed, or when you are afraid for your job, you tend to postpone a birth plan.
Is this decrease only circumstantial? Is it part of an endemic decline in fertility in France?
It is feared that in the coming months, the decline in fertility will continue, again because of the crisis. Like everywhere else. The effects will be the same for our neighbors, or even worse because social policy in France plays a shock absorber role in the face of crises. We saw it with the economic crisis of 2008: France was less affected in terms of fertility than other countries.
However, two things must be distinguished. There is what we observe at a given time, in cross section, like the decrease in the number of births in December and January. But it does not predict the fertility behaviors of entire generations. Just because people didn’t have children during lockdown doesn’t mean they won’t after. On the contrary, the majority tend to postpone their project. After each crisis, there is usually a catching-up phenomenon. We remain a country where couples mainly wish to have two children, it is a very strong standard, the French imagination is very attached to it. These are entrenched representations that do not need to change just because there is a crisis. The length of the crisis may have consequences for older people, for whom fertility is lower, especially for people who could not have access to ART during confinement. And then there are also those whom the crisis will have convinced never to have children. But this is probably still marginal.
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