France is on track to run a larger-than-expected pension deficit from 2045 as falling birth rates and an ageing population put increasing pressure on the country's retirement system, according to the body that monitors its sustainability.
The French Pensions Advisory Council said a recent downward revision to the fertility rate had worsened the outlook, with the gap between contributions and pension payments now expected to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2070.
The updated forecast was based on fresh population estimates released by the national statistics agency INSEE, which said it now expects the fertility rate to fall to 1.45 children per woman, down from a previous estimate of 1.8.
The deteriorating outlook is bad news for France's public finances. Last year, pension spending totalled €422 billion (U.S.$486 billion), equivalent to 14.1 per cent of economic output, the second-highest share among advanced economies after Italy.
The report is likely to fuel debate over pension reform, which is expected to be a major political issue ahead of the April 2027 presidential election.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last year agreed to suspend a deeply contested 2023 pension reform that would have gradually raised the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 by the beginning of 2028.
The decision, which Lecornu took to avoid a vote of no confidence, pushes the final decision back until after the next presidential election.
The Pensions Advisory Council has said that raising the retirement age is the only solution to the growing deficit in the pension system that would not affect economic growth.
It added that higher immigration could help public finances in the short term, but noted that migrants eventually retire as well, merely delaying the financial reckoning by around a decade.
France's natural population growth turned negative in 2025 and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future, with population gains until 2037 driven entirely by migration, according to INSEE's projections.
By 2070, one in three people in France will be aged 65 or older, roughly double the share aged under 20.
The sharpest shift will be among the oldest age groups, with the number of people aged 80 and over more than doubling to around nine million, while the number of centenarians could quadruple to about 160,000.
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