Since France went into its first Covid-19 lockdown last March, an imminent explosion of “lockdown babies” was expected. Instead, statistics show that instead of a baby boom, France seems to be experiencing a baby drought.
Rather than a baby boom, the numbers gathered by national statistics institute Insee revealed a 2 percent decline in France's birthrate. Even though some of it could be attributed to a natural decline of our times, in part because women wait longer to have babies and therefore may not be as fertile, Insee underscored that the decrease in the latest statistics was indeed "steep".
A recent study published by Demographic Research on the impact of Covid-19 on fertility plans in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom – countries placed under lockdown in periods during 2020, and where a massive number of respondents confirmed couples had either postponed or fully abandoned their baby plans due to the pandemic. In France, 50.7 percent of people said they had postponed their plans to have a child, and 17.3 percent that they had abandoned them altogether.
The baby boom that never was: France sees sharp decline in ‘lockdown babies’ (france24.com)
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