French Birthrate Problems

Minty_Fresh

Banned
France lost much of its traditional demographic superiority over its rivals during the 19th century, and it was argued that a good reason for why France lagged behind their German rivals in the run up to WW2 in all phases of war was because of this birthrate decline.

How would this decline be fixed? Would the lack of a drop in birthrate mean that France could become the pre-eminent world power after WW1 and perhaps be more prepared for WW2?

I've heard it said that the massive amount of casualties suffered in the Napoleonic Wars played a part in the birthrate drop, but other nations also had these huge casualties, and some lost more than France, and still ended up without a big drop. Another cause might be the practice enshrined by Napoleonic Law where land had to be divided equally among sons rather than just given to the firstborn, which could have made multiple children deincentivized in landholding families. You could even make an argument that the advancement of women, while stifled by the Napoleonic Code, was more of a social phenomenon due to the French Revolution, and as in all societies where there is an advancement in women's place in society, there is a corresponding drop in birthrate.

But I'm not really swayed by any of these arguments. Any thoughts?
 

trurle

Banned
French population in 19th century looks like logistic function. The Napoleonic Wars had negligible effect, lost war with Germany in 1870 had larger but also small effect.
Seems the Frenchmen had a problem with TFR (total fertility rate). The demographic data of 20th century clearly confirm it. Also, the trend of reduced TFR was paradoxically broken in 1937-1942 period, before or during German occupation. I must conclude something was deeply broken inside the French society. I think (but may be wrong) what the broken element of French society was the large incidence of the step-families (or the manner how the problems of step-families were treated). Or may be social inequality.
Please see
Childbearing Trends and Policies in Europe, volume 2
by Tomas Frejka, Tomas Sobotka

On page 518 of reference above, no sharp transition is noticeable. Since 1930, some interesting trends indicating greater social equality are in place, and age distribution of birth shows what only younger persons have benefited these changes. In brief, number of childless and multi-children (4 or more) mothers have started to decrease in 1930, and more 2-3 children families have appeared.

Also, several sources mention hard and long-term conflict between Church and pro-children civilian parties in 19th century France on the family policy. I do not find explanation which problems were tried to be solved, but problems were definitely grave.
 
Last edited:
Another issue is how French economy lagged behind most Northern European nations during the 19th century to a certain extent. Southern Europe was even less developped but somehow still maintained a strong population growth. IMHO French agriculture achieved its apex during the 18th century and failed to do the shift into an industrial society, just a wild guess, I'm not particularly versed in demographics.
 
Another issue is how French economy lagged behind most Northern European nations during the 19th century to a certain extent. Southern Europe was even less developped but somehow still maintained a strong population growth. IMHO French agriculture achieved its apex during the 18th century and failed to do the shift into an industrial society, just a wild guess, I'm not particularly versed in demographics.

It did not lag behind others.its industrial development was just weaken than the british, german or belgian ones because France lacked Keys resources of the first industrial revolution, except in a few regions, mainly its border north and east regions.

And there were french regions where demographic growth was very strong : especially Britanny, where it was customary to have equality sharing of inheritances among children even before the french revolution.

So the main cause for french demographic stagnation was cultural, not economic.
 
It did not lag behind others.its industrial development was just weaken than the british, german or belgian ones because France lacked Keys resources of the first industrial revolution, except in a few regions, mainly its border north and east regions.

The Nord-Pas-de-Calais has enough coal and Alsace-Lorraine had more than enough iron to just as industrial as, say, Belgium. Also, even the "south" had good basis to become a solid secondary industrial area, Lyon was one of the most important banking centers in Europe and had important factories for centuries, like the silk industry. It's more than enough to have a solid industrial revolution. But, as you said, French centralistic economic culture and agrarian focus made then lag behind other similar countries. I'm not claiming that's necessarily related to France's demographic problems, but it's something to look into.
 
The Nord-Pas-de-Calais has enough coal and Alsace-Lorraine had more than enough iron to just as industrial as, say, Belgium. Also, even the "south" had good basis to become a solid secondary industrial area, Lyon was one of the most important banking centers in Europe and had important factories for centuries, like the silk industry. It's more than enough to have a solid industrial revolution. But, as you said, French centralistic economic culture and agrarian focus made then lag behind other similar countries. I'm not claiming that's necessarily related to France's demographic problems, but it's something to look into.

They had far less coal than Britain or Germany and far less iron than Britain. If France had retained what was to become Belgium and Luxemburg (not to say the whole Rhineland), nobody would talk about french economic backwardness because it mainly is a problem of geographic and geologic perspective.

And the french were at the top of the second industrial revolution. In 1914, the number one european auto industry was the french one.

I agree with you on the agrarian culture. The french population in its majority prefered to remain in rural areas, or more precisely in their birthplace. One very specific french cultural characteristic is that many people will do anything possible to remain in the place where they grew-up as kids or to return there as soon as possible. Twenty years ago, I met and had a conversation with young french people from Lorraine. And when then told me it was difficult to find jobs in their region and I asked "why would not you move somewhere else where there are better jobs opportunities, they answered to me "but we want to remain to country (meaning no further than some 50 kilomètres away from where they lived then).

The result of this state of mind is that it was only by 1930 that french population became in majority urban.
 
Also, the trend of reduced TFR was paradoxically broken in 1937-1942 period, before or during German occupation.

Actually, the trend had shifted well before this - TFR for married women in the aftermath of WW1 really jumped up - and stayed up into the 1960s. Due to the enormous shortage of men in the aftermath of WW1, for a generation many French women were unable to find suitable men for marriage so the TFR for ALL women took a while to catch up.

I must conclude something was deeply broken inside the French society.

I'm not sure there was anything fundamentally "wrong". One of the issues France has is that it is not well endowed with the resources required for industrial production. As such the "carrying capacity" of French industry was less. Limited French population expansion during the 19th Century may have helped to ensure France was so prosperous during the 20th Century since instead of overshooting their carrying capacity they undershot it.

I've read that the largest single reason for the low French TFR was the land reforms of the French Revolution - it meant that land ownership was dominated by small farmers who owned their land and that the inheritance rules made small families economically sensible for individual farming families.

fasquardon
 
Fertility seems to to have decreased even before the French Revolution at least in urban areas. So I think it was a question of social prestige, fertility decreased first among nobles, which was later imitated by the other classes.
 
Top