In a previous article published in December, we explored how the historical fall in the birth rate in France – with only 663,000 births in 2024 – represents a major threat to the future of our social and economic model, as well as for the preservation of progressive and liberal values. According to INSEE’s demographic assessment for the year 2024, the birth rate in France was 1.62 children per woman, a very disturbing drop of 21.5% since 2010. An analysis of the British daily Financial Times, published on January 11, 2025 under the title “The Relationship Recement is Going Global” (“Relational recession is globalizing”), sheds new light on this threat, identifying a deep cause: the sharp drop in couples training rate.
The data is eloquent in France, where INSEE records a significant drop in marriages, from more than 305,000 in 2000 to around 240,000 in 2024 for different sex couples, a decrease of 20% despite a slight post-Cavid recovery. This trend is not isolated: the Financial Times survey reveals a remarkable correlation between the decline of formal unions and that of the birth rate around the world. Countries that know the highest reductions in torque are precisely those that display the lowest birth rate, particularly in Europe, East Asia and Latin America.
Marriage, the foundation of the birth rate
The close correlation between marriage and birth rate has its source in the singular function occupied by marriage in human societies. As the American demographer Lyman Stone explains, marriage does not simply represent a traditional framework of parenting, but plays a fundamental role of insurance in the face of the vagaries of family life. Marriage offers women crucial protection during periods of vulnerability linked to maternity, which often cause career interruptions and increased financial needs.
This insurance dimension of marriage transcends the traditional conception of man as a simple provider. Lyman Stone also recalls that in pre -modern societies, women already contribute significantly to the home economy. Rather, marriage creates an institutional framework which facilitates long -term planning necessary for the education of children, by combining material security and formalized commitment. It is this double dimension which explains why married couples have historically maintained a higher birth rate, even in contemporary societies.
Data in France corroborate this analysis. An INSEE study published in February 2011 highlighted the significant difference in fertility between the different forms of union: only 15% of married people aged 18 to 39 lived without children, against 46% of PACS couples and 49% of couples in free union. Even more revealing, among parents, married couples demonstrated a much stronger propensity to enlarge their families: barely 29% stopped at a child, against 62% of PACS couples.
These observations invite us to rethink the approach of natalist policies, traditionally focused on direct aid to families. Indeed, they may not be the most effective way to raise the birth rate. It would be upstream that it would be necessary to act to hope to reverse the demographic trend and avoid the disaster in the decades to come, by acting in a non -coercive manner on the formation of couples and more particularly their commitment to marriage.
Increase incentives to marriage
The “relational recession” exposed in the article of the Financial Times poses a major demographic challenge, but solutions exist. In his analysis, Lyman Stone identifies several explanatory factors for the phenomenon of falling the rate of couples formation. The most significant would be the economic stagnation of young men in developed countries. American data is eloquent: between 2001 and 2022, the real income of men under the age of 35 have stagnated or even decreased, a trend that is found in many developed countries.
This precariousness considerably reduces their attraction as potential partners, in a context where economic stability remains a decisive criterion in the training of couples. The figures also reveal a correlation: in American states where the income of young men has decreased the most, the marriage rate of women from 22 to 30 years old experienced the most marked declines.
Material incentives at marriage seem to constitute a more effective lever for action than direct aid to birth.
But it is especially in the analysis of public policies aimed at encouraging marriage that Lyman Stone’s study sheds promising light. Unlike the incentives to the birth rate, the efficiency of which is generally relatively limited, monetary incentives at marriage demonstrate a significant and immediate impact on couples training. Two distinct studies, conducted in Austria and Sweden, reveal that the temporary establishment of significant tax advantages for married couples has led to a marked increase in the number of marriages.
As the American demographer points out, “In Austria and Sweden, marriage subsidies have stimulated unions and probably the birth rate, even if the effects on the birth rate, spread over many years after the peak of marriages, are more difficult to observe”. Even more remarkable, these incited marriages did not present divorce rates above the average and their birth rate has proven comparable to that of other marriages, although slightly lower than that of couples formed without tax incentive.
This sensitivity of marriage to economic incentives is found in multiple contexts. In South Korea, a research of 2020 relating to the municipal subsidies granted to marriages between South Korean and foreign citizens demonstrates that these aids increased the total number of unions without creating a substitution effect: South Korean men who contract a marriage with foreign women thanks to these devices did not reduce the matrimonial opportunities of exclusively South-Korean couples. Likewise, an American study published in 2021 showed that when the marital status influenced the chances of being called under the flags, the marriages contracted to avoid conscription did not have divorce rates higher than the others, despite the often young age of the spouses.
This importance of material support in couples training is not new. While in traditional societies, marriage was accompanied by significant material support for the community (consequent donations, housing aid), modern companies have only preserved symbolic vestiges such as marriage lists, whose relative value has considerably reduced.
Furthermore, contemporary welfare state sometimes tends to discourage marriage. Many social assistance devices around the world are more advantageous for singles than for married couples, creating a “penalty at marriage” which, by indirectly encouraging celibacy, contribute to the dramatic decline of the birth rate.
A family policy focused on marriage
The Hungarian experience, more recent and more ambitious, confirms the relevance of the natalist approach centered on marriage. Since 2013, Hungary has radically reoriented its family policy by conditioning the majority of aid for housing and the birth rate for marital status. This reform was a paradigm shift: rather than creating new aids, the country has restructured its existing social programs to promote married couples.
The results of this policy are convincing. The effect on weddings was immediate and spectacular, with a marked increase in unions. Even more significant, this increase in marriages resulted, after a period of one to three years, by a significant improvement in adjusted birth rate indicators. These indicators, more reliable than the simple birth rate, because they take into account the calendar effects and the composition by parity, reveal a real trend reversal. While Hungary had experienced the highest drop in birth rate in Europe between 1995 and 2013, it is now one of the rare countries, with the Czech Republic, to have reversed the curve.
These results from Hungary confirm the central hypothesis of demographer Lyman Stone: material incentives to marriage seem to constitute a more effective lever for action than direct aid. The different natural experiences thus converge on a major conclusion for the development of public public policies: governments would have every interest in developing incentive policies promoting the training of married couples in priority.
It would still be to define the exact way in which this idea would be implemented, for example by strengthening the incentive to the marriage represented by the family quotient, including for couples with similar income. Although it has not been designed for that, the family quotient mechanism could officially adopt a natalist objective, aimed at increasing the number of weddings that has been falling in France since 2000.
This approach could constitute a decisive lever to respond to the crisis of denatality which seriously threatens France, as the rest of the world. This lever would obviously not contradict other more targeted measures, such as resolution of the housing crisis, abundant and cheap childcare services for everyone, or a pro-family culture where everyone feels responsible for helping parents who save our future.
