All 29-year-old French citizens are to be encouraged by their government to have babies while they still can.
Health officials say the aim is to avoid these men and women facing fertility problems later on and thinking “if only I had known”.
The strategy is one part of a 16-point-plan to boost the fertility rate in France, one of many western countries, including the UK where figures are tumbling.
The trend is creating anxiety about how governments can fund pensions and healthcare for ageing populations, with fewer younger working people paying taxes.
But globally, policies to boost fertility rates have produced limited results, and critics of the French scheme suggested that better housing and maternity provision could be more effective solutions.
The French government’s attempt to address falling birth rates will see it send out “targeted, balanced, and scientifically sound information” to young people, including issues including on sexual health and contraception.
The material “will also reiterate that fertility is a shared responsibility between women and men”, the country’s health ministry said.
As a part of its plan, it is also trying to boost the number of egg-freezing centres from 40 to 70 and make the country a leader in fertility research.
Its health system already provides free egg-freezing for 29-37 year olds, a service that costs about £5,000 per round in the UK.
France’s fertility rate of 1.56 children per woman is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population.
But it is higher than the infamously low rates in China, Japan and South Korea; and the UK – where the latest available figures show that it had dropped to a…
