Even if it is still abnormally high, mortality has fallen this year and the birth rate has risen slightly, announced INSEE, in a study published on Tuesday, estimating that the demographic consequences of the health crisis were less marked in 2021 than 'in 2020.
Consequence of this double evolution: the natural balance, which had reached a historic low last year (at +66,000), recovered slightly, to +81,000.
Also driven by net migration (+140,000), the French population has therefore increased by 0.3% in one year, to reach 67.8 million inhabitants at the start of 2022, according to the Institute for Statistical Studies.
Nearly 35,000 additional deaths in 2021
In 2021, around 657,000 people died in France, according to estimates made at the end of November: “it is 12,000 less than in 2020 (-1.8%), but significantly more than in 2019, before the pandemic (+ 44,000, or +7.1%)”, notes INSEE.
By taking into account the aging of the population (which logically leads to an increase in deaths, even without the Covid), but also, conversely, to advances in medicine which lower the probability of dying at a given age, the demographers of the public institute estimate that the Covid epidemic resulted in 35,000 additional deaths in 2021, compared to what was expected from a statistical point of view.
In 2020, this surplus was 47,000.
This improvement led to a slight increase in life expectancy at birth, which reached 85.4 years for women (+0.3) and 79.3 years for men (+0.2), without however recovering its pre-pandemic level.
Strong rise in births since the summer
For its part, the birth rate, which in 2020 had reached a historic low - unrelated to the Covid -, first fell sharply at the start of 2021, nine months after the first confinement: the health crisis and its economic uncertainties "may have discouraged couples to procreate in the spring of 2020" and encourage them to "postpone their parenthood projects", notes INSEE: this resulted in a dropout of 10% of births between mid-December 2020 and mid-February 2021, by compared to the same period a year earlier.
Our report on demography
However, the number of births then rebounded in March and April, then a "strong rise" since the summer, which in the end, for the whole of 2021, made it possible to "catch up with the level of births in the year 2020, even slightly exceeding it”, notes INSEE: 738,000 babies were born in 2021, i.e. 3,000 more than the previous year (+0.4%), ending a continuous decline between 2015 and 2020 .
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