An increase in the French population until 2044, followed by a slight decrease, leading to a country of 68 million inhabitants by 2070. In the latest issue of the review Population and Societies of the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), published on Monday February 14, demographers Laurent Toulemon, Elisabeth Algava, Nathalie Blanpain and Gilles Pison review the different scenarios, including the most probable, which gave these projections of the ‘INSEE published in November 2021.
Two main phenomena are taken into account to arrive at this outlook: the downward revision of the population for 2021, to 67.4 million inhabitants, and that of the fertility, life expectancy and migration assumptions.
The number of births should remain higher than that of deaths until 2035, even if it is slowly eroding. “The script says “central”which is the most probable, leads to an annual number of births decreasing by 80,000 ( – 10%) by 2070 compared to today’s level (740,000 births in 2020 compared to 660,000 in 2070)”, say the authors of the study. According to Laurent Toulemon, the contribution of immigration should allow the French population to continue to increase slightly until 2044, with a peak at 69.3 million inhabitants. And this, despite a negative natural balance from 2035.
Different age pyramid
Until then, the latest INSEE projections, dating from 2016, were based on slightly positive population growth until 2070. With these new assumptions, the statistics service announces that net migration of 700,000 more inhabitants per year will not compensate in the long term for the excess of deaths in relation to the number of births. According to Laurent Toulemon, France will also display a very different age pyramid: “The number of people aged 75 or over is expected to grow by 5.7 million more than today, while those under 60 will conversely be 5 million fewer. »
In this “central” scenario conducted by INSEE and analyzed by INED, fertility would stabilize at 1.8 children per woman. “If this rate were to rise to 2.0, then France would have 4.1 million more inhabitants in five decades than in the world. “central scenario”. On the other hand, if it fell to 1.6, there would be 4 million fewer inhabitants in 2070., argues the researcher. The results can vary greatly if other assumptions are made with regard to net migration and life expectancy. This leads to a total population in 2070 ranging from 58 million in the worst case to 79.1 million “if all favorable developments combined”present the researchers in charge of the study.
You have 24.14% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.