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France’s demographic landscape is shifting rapidly, with new official data showing that more than one-third of babies born in 2024 had at least one parent born abroad — and nearly one in five were born to two foreign-born parents.
According to figures released by the national statistics agency INSEE, out of 660,787 babies born in France last year, 225,591 – or 34.1 percent – had at least one parent born outside the country. Of these, 125,440 babies – 19 percent of all births – were born to two foreign-born parents, the highest level recorded to date.
Within that group, 114,325 births were to parents who were both born outside the European Union, while a further 7,434 were to parents both born in other EU countries. Another 100,151 babies were born to couples where only one parent was foreign-born.
By contrast, babies born to two French-born parents accounted for 435,196 births, or just 65.9 percent of the total — a share that has been steadily declining over the past two decades.
A total of 71.8 percent of babies born in France in 2013 had two parents born in the country, as evidenced in the table below from the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), citing INSEE data. By 2015, that share had slipped to 70.4 percent, falling below 70 percent by 2016 and reaching 66.9 percent by 2023. Over the same period, the share of babies born to at least one foreign-born parent rose from 28.2 percent in 2013 to 33.1 percent in 2023.
The trend is likely to continue. INSEE data published earlier this month revealed there are now a record 6 million foreigners living in France, close to double the 3.6 million residing in the country back in 2006.
“The foreign population in France is growing FOUR times faster than the population of French nationality,” noted French analyst Marc Vanguard.
The majority of newcomers are not Europeans — just 22 percent of those arriving in the last five years did so from another European country. The continent of origin with the most arrivals was Africa, with 59 percent.
