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INSIGHT

French Incentives to Produce Larger Families

Aired October 25, 2005 - 23:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: A children's crusade. France tries to boost its falling birth rate with more money for mothers. Countries all across the continent are looking at a future with fewer and fewer kids.
Hello and welcome.

French police announced last week they had arrested several couples who had bought themselves babies. The youngsters were all born to Bulgarian mothers, they were well-treated and cost the couples between 5,000 and 6,000 euros. It is a sad story and ironic in a way because so many French couples don't want children. Their government not only offers them generous incentives to have kids, it's going to offer them even more because so far the incentives haven't been enough.

On our program today, France in the family way.

We begin with CNN's Jim Bitterman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BITTERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the very first day of Sonjetta Lamborje's (ph) life, she has no idea yet that she has been born in a country with a social security system that will try to protect her literally from cradle to grave. But she'll learn soon enough with the obligatory monthly medical exams until she is one year old, the quarterly medical visits until she is three, the housing aid her parents will receive, the childcare payments for daycare and the family allowance, up to 513 euros, about $615 a month, no matter what the income level.

Sonjetta (ph) may one day learn that France puts a very high value on raising children. Maybe some day her doctor will explain it all.

DR. LAURENT MONDELBROT, LOUIS MOURIER HOSPITAL: It's a whole phenomenon of society and I think there is a sort of good feeling about having children in France and good prenatal care. I think everybody is onboard to trying to do the best we can.

BITTERMAN: That good feeling about raising children here often starts with the midwife assigned to every expectant mother and her explanations about giving birth. And it does not end until 18 years later, when the babies those mothers are carrying reach legal adulthood.

The good feeling about having children gets pushed along each step of the way by every manner of stipend, public assistance, institution and organization because despite the billions it costs, the French are intent on producing more offspring.

PHILIPPE BAS, FRENCH GOVT. MINISTER: We want more children because the strength of our economy and our country depends on how many children we can have. It is not a lost expenditure. It is a useful expenditure.

BITTERMAN: But an even more concrete reason for spending all that money is that in France, like elsewhere in Europe, the population is retiring earlier and living longer. To keep the system turning, it's essential to have enough younger people entering the workforce to pay for the social security of their parents who are leaving it.

(on camera): With the French social security system running a 12 billion euro -- that's $14 billion -- deficit last year, French mothers have their work cut out for them. Yet promoting larger families here is nothing new. French demographers were among the first in Europe to spot the problem shortly after World War II, and for the past 60 years governments on all sides of the political aisle have promoted policies to encourage child-rearing.

(voice-over): Has it worked? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, France is now number two in Europe, just behind Ireland, in the average number of children per household. But that number, at 1.9, is still below the replacement rate needed to guarantee a stable rather than aging population. In a country openly obsessed with demographics, it's well- known that the goal is 2.07 children per family. And so now the government is in some circumstances going to raise the payments to families with a third child to $750 euros, $900 per month.

LAURENT CLEVNOT, FRENCH FAMILY ASSN.: We don't give this money to have babies and we will respect the freedom of each family to have the number of children they want to have, but we want to put in place the conditions of life for real freedom of choice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to have at least three children. Yes.

BITTERMAN: In fact, surveys of French mothers indicate that many, like Air France ticket agent Ann Monsour (ph), would like to have larger families. The ideal size on a national basis averages out to 2.4 children per family. And while Monsour (ph) says the government's new offer just might convince her to help the national effort to bring more Frenchmen into the world, there are other concerns. She was lucky enough to find daycare for her first child at a facility run by the French Center for the Protection of Infants, but she is not sure she'll be so fortunate with future additions to the family.

And then there is a question of career. By working part-time and from home, Sophie Hautbois, a lawyer for an animation company, has been able to juggle two children and her professional life. But taking the time off for a third at this point in her career, she says, would be difficult, even though by law her company would have to grant her as much as three years of maternity leave.

SOPHIE HAUTBOIS, ATTORNEY AND MOTHER: The problem for women who have got responsibilities in a company and wants to keep their responsibilities, this is not sufficient because it's not a question -- it's not always a question of money.

BITTERMAN: And so after 60 years of social engineering, the French have created some of the demographic change they wanted, but despite the construction of an elaborate support machine for families here, there is no guarantee this latest bit of fine-tuning will in the end produce the kind of numbers the government wants.

Jim Bitterman, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now. When we come back, who benefits from France's baby bonus plan?

Stay with us for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The math is the same no matter where you do it. Every country with fewer young people will have relatively more old people, and old people are expensive. Today nearly half of Europeans are dependents outside the labor force. Their families or their governments support them. A generation from now, dependents will make up two-thirds of the population.

Welcome back.

Every country needs young people to help support the old people. France is one of many countries to grapple with the problem of paying for an aging population. Is paying for a younger population the answer?

A short time ago we got back in touch with Dr. Laurent Mondelbrot, the head of the maternity ward at Louis Mourier Hospital, who you saw in Jim Bitterman's report. He says that family allowances and childcare do have a role in the decision women make to have children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MONDELBROT: I'm sure that many of these financial reasons are important. There are a lot of other reasons, but one incentive to have bigger families and to have more children is financial, because one of the problems with having larger families is financial and is also for many women to try to hold a job and have a career and also have a larger family.

MANN: The government is offering to increase payments to women by a few hundred, several hundred euros a month. You run across in your practice at your hospital women who are both affluent and it's fair to say less affluent. Are they all going to respond to, say, 500 euros a month? Is that going to make a difference?

MONDELBROT: Well, in my hospital, most women are not affluent and for people who are lower middle class, for instance, working families, it is an important help, all the way through pregnancy.

There is another important help, which is having access to free or practically free coverage of all costs related to pregnancy, prenatal follow-up, delivery, post-natal care for the babies. All of these incentives are important.

MANN: Now, you're a doctor. You're not a sociologist, you're not a government official, so I don't want to ask you a question that you feel you cannot answer, but let me just run something by you, which is that the birth rate among women whose families have been in France for generations is falling; the birth rate among immigrant families is quite high. Is France -- is the French government, in adopting these measures, trying to encourage some kinds of babies, knowing that it's getting other kinds of babies that it doesn't want to encourage? Is there a differential impact that it's really aiming for, do you think?

MONDELBROT: You're perfectly right. That's something that we see in the neighborhood where I work, that a lot of first generation immigrants tend to have more children. But that is not -- that difference tends to level off in the second generation, and I think that the policy -- that's definitely one of the aims in this policy, but it's not the only aim, and it's not sure that really the people who are most going to benefit from these extra aids are people who are long-term French as opposed to more recent immigrants.

So I think if that's one of the reasons for these measures, I don't really see any reason to expect that it would differentially increase families in traditional French families more than in immigrant families.

MANN: I ask only because it would encourage a third child. It wouldn't necessarily encourage a fifth or a sixth. Big families aren't really being encouraged to get bigger. Little families are encouraged to grow just that much more.

MONDELBROT: Yeah. We've noticed, and that's been something which has been studied for many years, that one of the big differences is families will tend to have two children and the question is having a third children or not having a third children. And that is something which has a very big impact in terms of women being able to pursue their career or not and in terms of financial problems, getting a bigger home or car and so forth.

So I think that financial reasons are very important to having a third child, and some people really want to have a third child but think that they can't afford it.

MANN: Once again, you're an obstetrician by training, not a politician. If France has a problem with its birth rate, couldn't it just allow more people to immigrate? One of the other things that seems to present itself to an outsider is a choice that France is making between allowing more people in, which it's done quite generously in the past, and encouraging those who have been there for generations to have a lot more children, which it has been trying and trying to do without enormous success. Is France making a choice for children and not for more immigrants?

MONDELBROT: Well, I wouldn't say that it's not been successful. I think that the French birth rate has been stabilized and has even increased over the last new years, and a lot of these efforts that have been made have to some extent been successful. And I think that it would be really unfair to say that the birth rate has not been influenced by these various policies.

So as far as allowing more immigration versus having more children, I think that that is a question for politicians. As you said, that's not my -- I'm not really qualified to answer that question. But what we notice is that probably the two factors have to go together. In other words, who is going to pay for our retirement? Who is going to work? Who is going to be the active and dynamic force in the society? And I think that probably there is some type of equilibrium that has to be found, and going all the way for immigration would probably be something a little bit difficult and it has to be accompanied by a good birth rate among people living in France, which means people of French or immigrant descent for that matter.

MANN: Dr. Laurent Mondelbrot, of the Louis Mourier Hospital, thank you so much for talking with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

We take another break. When we come back, the largest country in Europe facing an unprecedented population decline. Russia's experience, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Russia's demographic crisis isn't theoretical or statistical. It is stunning. The country is losing up to a million people a year. The Russian Academy of Sciences estimates the population could plummet from a little more than 140 million today to about 70 million over the next 50 years. The birth rate is part of the problem. Life expectancy is the other.

Welcome back.

If current trends continue, Russia will no longer have the largest population in Europe, but it will, for example, still have the world's longest borders to protect, and maybe only a million conscripts or so available to do it by 2050. You can actually watch the population of Russia drop on the Web. A Web side called Demoscope.ru tracks the number of births and deaths in Russia in realtime. It notes that on average a person is born every 22 seconds there, but one person dies every 13 seconds.

The situation is so serious, some are calling for a major and drastic rethink of Russia's economic and military policies.

Matthew Chance has this look now at the poverty, disease and death behind the decline.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Russia's maternity wards, a battle for national survival is being fought. Official statistics say more pregnancies are now terminated here than babies born. The children of Mother Russia are lucky to get this far. And when they're 50, experts predict the number of Russians will have halved if the current population decline isn't stopped.

DR. VLADIMIR SEROV, RUSSIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (through translator): We know the percentage of people incapable of having children because of botched abortions is 15 percent, which is incredibly high for any country. We also know that 26 million Russians would like to have children. So can you imagine our extra investment in medicine and technology would increase the country's population.

CHANCE: And in places like in the village of Tuzhimova, south of Moscow, Russia's demographic nightmare has already hit. Once a village of hundreds, now Vladimir Viraxin (ph) is one of only three residents left. The others have moved out or just died, he told me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a big village. Everybody had their own cattle. There were lots of people here, lots of children. They were running around and parents couldn't make them go home.

CHANCE: Across Russia annually births are routinely outstripped by deaths.

(on camera): Well, this is a stark illustration of what Russia is up against. This vast country is slowly being emptied of its people. And the low birth rates here are made worse by the fact that many Russians die at a relatively young age. On average men don't make it past 58 years old. Alcoholism, a poor diet and accidents are the biggest cause.

(voice-over): And Russians are subjected to a daily barrage of casualties. Earlier this year, one of the country's worst car crashes, more than 53 vehicles piled up, at least four people were killed and many others injured.

Analysts say the figures are at battlefield levels. More die unnatural deaths every year in Russia than have been killed in the whole Iraq war.

SEROV (through translator): 36,000 die on the roads. About 32,000 of alcohol poisoning. There are 30,000 murders. Many more die of preventable illness. It's a complex problem, linked with our transportation system, housing and diets. Only if living standards in Russia grow will this problem be solved.

But in villages like Tuzhimova, it's already too late. As Russia's population shrinks, whole communities too are dying out.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has seen an explosion of HIV and AIDS among its young people and a resurgence of tuberculosis as well. We got in touch with a leading scholar of the Russian health and mortality crisis, demographer Murray Feshbach.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY FESHBACH, WOODROW WILSON CTR.: I believe it's going to cause major problems. That's not just a question of club of Rome (ph) and the availability of resources, but it's the issue of the supply and healthy people, which is -- the complication also here is because children are born largely unhealthy, and that's official Russian figures, combined with they're getting worse in their school-years and then combined with the new emerging diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, and the return to a large degree of tuberculosis that is almost unbelievable, that is -- which hits them very young. Which then means that in 10, 11 years many more will die and that will lead to a big explosion in mortality, which means family formation will be affected, which means supply to the military will be effected.

The labor force will need to increase productivity or output per worker dramatically. And the question of the national security of the state, because they'll probably lose close to one-third of their population by mid-century, that is from roughly 145 to 150 million down to somewhere in the range of 80 to 100 million. That's unprecedented in recent time.

MANN: How much does Russia's problem with alcohol multiply?

FESHBACH: Alcohol continues to be a major problem. Somewhat of a shift between vodka and beer, but if you drink enough beer you're not helping yourself any way, and the question of behavior when you're inebriated or driving poorly or drowning frequently, more than you would expect, or having alcohol poisoning to an incredible degree.

So alcohol, where the World Health Organization considers 8 liters per capita 15 years of age and older to be the point at which a physiologically negative impact begins to occur and then more, in Russia that number is -- depending on which estimate you use -- 15, 16 or 18 liters per capita.

MANN: The Russian government owes it to its people to try and make sure that each one of them lives a long, healthy, prosperous life. That's on an individual level. But on a national level, couldn't the Russian government compensate for its population decline by encouraging more immigration, by bringing more new people into the country?

FESHBACH: Well, they want to increase it dramatically, to up to 750,000 to a million per year, but the question is who. How many of them are legal, how many of them are undocumented migrants, how many of them will bring in other problems.

MANN: Let me ask you just one last quick question. As Russia declines, is it going to get less Russian? Are there populations that are shrinking in one ethnic group, the majority ethnic group, rather than in smaller ethnic groups in the country?

FESHBACH: The answer is yes. That's the short answer. The longer answer is, there is no question that the differential fertility rates, total fertility rates or number of children born per woman in the ethnic area, particularly those of Muslim origin, are two to three times higher than of the strictly speaking Russian population, that is of the roughly 140 nationalities in the country, Russians represent 80, 85 percent or so of the total population, that is of the total population of the Russian federation.

In the Muslim -- the territories of Muslim -- where the populations of Muslim origin, meaning I'm not saying that everyone is religious, practices Sharia, does all the five pillars of wisdom, et cetera, but there they continue to have high levels and will have more if the situation in Chechnya, Dagestan, et cetera, will settle down, hopefully, more peacefully, and then they can produce their five sons for each point of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) or papa, when he dies and you don't necessarily hit five out of five males who survive to that age.

So the incentive is still there, though it is declined in the number of births there too, but, again, the differential is very high.

MANN: Murray Feshbach, thank you so much for talking with us.

FESHBACH: You're welcome I assure you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: One ominous comparison and prediction that he made for us: unlike many other countries, Russia sees most of its HIV and AIDS among young people. Dr. Feshbach said that it will be 2008-2010 when Russia starts to see large fatalities, a large scale impact, of all of those younger people with HIV/AIDS.

I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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