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Demographics of France

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France was historically Europe's most populous country. During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French; by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one-fifth. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, other European countries, such as Germany and Russia, had caught up with France and overtaken it in number of people. The country's population sharply increased with the baby boom following World War II, as it did in other European countries.

According to INSEE, from the year 2004, 200,000 immigrants entered the country annually. One out of two was born in Europe and one in three in Africa. Between 2009 and 2012, the number of Europeans migrating to France increased sharply (an annual increase of 12%), but this percentage decreased steadily until 2022, supplanted by a rise in the number of immigrants from Africa.

The national birth rate, after dropping for a time, began to rebound in the 1990s, and the country's fertility rate was close to the replacement level until about 2014. According to a 2006 INSEE study, the natural increase was close to 300,000 people a year, a level that had "not been reached in more than thirty years." With a total fertility rate of 1.59 (for France métropolitaine) in 2024, France remains one of the above-average fertile countries in the European Union, but it is now far from the replacement level.

In 2021, the total fertility rate of France was 1.82, and 7.7% was the percentage of births, where this was a women's 4th or more child.

Among the 802,000 babies born in metropolitan France in 2010, 80.1% had two French parents, 13.3% had one French parent, and 6.6% had two non-French parents.

Between 2006 and 2008, about 22% of newborns in France had at least one foreign-born grandparent (9% born in another European country, 8% born in the Maghreb and 2% born in another region of the world). Censuses on race and ethnic origin were banned by the French government in 1978.

Historical overview

1800 to 20th century

Starting around 1800, the historical evolution of the population in France has been atypical in Europe. Unlike the rest of Europe, there was no strong population growth in France in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. The birth rate in France diminished much earlier than in the rest of Europe in part because from the late 18th century inheritance laws dictated equal distribution of estates between heirs. The country's large population gave Napoleon a seemingly limitless supply of men for the Grande Armée, but the birth rate began to fall in the late 18th century; thus population growth was quite slow in the 19th century, and the nadir was reached in the first half of the 20th century when France, surrounded by the rapidly growing populations of Germany and the United Kingdom, had virtually zero growth. The slow growth of France's population in the 19th century was reflected in the country's very low emigration rate.

The French population only grew by 8.6% between 1871 and 1911, while Germany's grew by 60% and Britain's by 54%.

French concerns about the country's slow population growth began after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. For four years in the 1890s, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. The National Alliance for the Growth of the French Population (ANAPF) was formed in 1896, and the Cognacq-Jay and other prizes were created for the parents of large families. Émile Zola's 1899 novel Fécondité is representative of contemporary concerns about the birthrate. France lost 10% of its active male population in World War I; the 1.3 million French deaths, along with even more births forgone by potential fathers being off at war, caused a drop of 3 million in the French population, and helped make Dénatalité a national obsession; by 1920 ANAPF had 40,000 members, and in July that year a new law strictly regulated abortion and contraception.

ANAPF proposed that parents of large families receive extra votes, and the belief that women's suffrage in other countries caused birth rates to decline helped defeat proposals before World War II to permit women to vote. The birth rate declined again after a brief baby boom from 1920 to 1923, and reached an all-time low during peacetime in the late 1930s. During the "hollow years" of the decade, the number of new conscripts declined because of the lack of births during World War I. From 1935 deaths exceeded births; the press widely discussed the country's decreasing population. Both left and right supported pro-natalist policies; even the French Communist Party ended its opposition to anti-birth control and anti-abortion laws in 1936, and its leader, Maurice Thorez, advocated for the "protection of family and childhood".

New laws in November 1938 and July 1939, the code de la famille, provided enough financial incentives for large families to double the income of a family with six children. The Vichy government approved of the laws and implemented them as part of its Travail, famille, patrie national motto, as did the postwar Provisional Government of the French Republic. Also, France encouraged immigration, chiefly from other European countries such as Italy, Poland, and Spain. (In fact, with its low birth rate, stagnating or declining native-born population, and role as a destination for migrants from other parts of Europe, France's situation before World War II was not unlike that of Germany today.)

After World War II

France experienced a baby boom after 1945; it reversed a long-term record of low birth rates. The government's pro-natalist policy of the 1930s, however, does not explain this sudden recovery, which was often portrayed in France as a "miracle". It was also atypical of the Western world: although there was a baby boom in other Western countries after the war, the baby boom in France was much stronger, and lasted longer than in most other Western countries (the United States was one of the few exceptions). In the 1950s and 1960s, France's population grew at 1% per year: the highest growth in the history of France, higher even than the high growth rates of the 18th or 19th century.

Since 1975, France's population growth rate has significantly diminished, but it still remains slightly higher than that of the rest of Europe, and much higher than at the end of the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. In the first decade of the third millennium, population growth in France was the highest in Europe, matched only by that of the Republic of Ireland, which, until recently, has also historically undergone stagnant growth and even decline relative to the rest of Europe. However, population growth of France is still lower than that of the United States, largely because of the latter's higher net migration rate.

Historical summary

The following compares the past, present, and future size of the French population with other entities in Europe and in the world. All statements refer to France as understood in its modern borders; this pertains also to other countries. Historians suggest that France was the most populous state in Europe from at least the period of Charlemagne and the Frankish Empire, if not earlier, to the 19th century. Population statistics prior to the modern era are historical estimates as official counts were not made.

  • Until 1795 metropolitan France was the most populous country of Europe, ahead of Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world, behind only China, India and Japan;
  • Between 1795 and 1866, metropolitan France was the second most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world, behind China, India and Russia (having become more populous than Japan during this period);
  • Between 1866 and 1909, metropolitan France was the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany;
  • Between 1909 and 1933, metropolitan France was the fourth most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom;
  • Between 1933 and 1991, metropolitan France was the fifth most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy;
  • In 1991, metropolitan France recovered its rank as the fourth most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, overtaking Italy. Worldwide, France's ranking has fallen to twentieth most populous country;
  • In 2005 it was projected that if current demographic trends continued (i.e. declining population in Germany, and slightly rising population in France and the UK), around 2050 metropolitan France could again surpass the population of Germany, becoming the most populous state in the European Union. In contrast, 2009 UN projections say that the stronger-growing United Kingdom could be more populous than France in 2050, leaving France third amongst European nations, behind Russia and the UK.

In the above list, Turkey is not considered a European country. Turkey was less populous than metropolitan France until 1992 but in 2024 was more populous than France, the UK and Germany.

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