#fertility-decline

#fertility-decline

For the first time since the end of the second world war, France has recorded more deaths than births, suggesting that the country's long-held demographic advantage over other EU countries is slipping away. Across the country in 2025, there were 651,000 deaths and 645,000 births, according to newly released figures from the national statistics institute Insee. France had long been an exception across Europe, with birthrates that topped many of its neighbours'.

Yet perhaps it's time we ask not only why aren't women having babies?, but also why aren't men? Men are largely invisible in the birthrate debate. It's ironic that amid all the pontificating and the policy ideas for encouraging more women to have babies a conversation often being had by men the other half of humanity is strikingly underexamined. Part of the problem is an absence of data: like many European countries, we don't really have any on male fertility.