France to offer all 18 to 25-year-olds free fertility checks to combat falling ... trends now
France, a nation so famous for its lovers that it has a kiss named after it, needs help making babies.
That's according to President Emmanuel Macron, who has announced a sweeping series of measures to address what he called a 'scourge' of infertility in his country.
These include an offer of a free 'fertility check-up' to all 18 to 25-year-olds, both male and female.
In an interview with magazine Elle, he also mentioned a 'campaign' to help women preserve their fertility if they want to have children later in life, like egg freezing, as well as a national research project into infertility.
Mr Macron's campaign, which he hinted at in January when he called for a 'demographic rearmament', comes despite France having one of the highest birth rates in Western Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a sweeping series of measures to address what he called a 'scourge' of infertility in his country
France's fertility rate, a national measure of the average number of live births per woman, stands at 1.8, significantly above the UK's which sits at 1.5, according to the latest UN-backed data.
Both figures are below what scientists call the 'fertility replacement level' of 2.1 – the amount needed for a population to replace one generation with the next.
Mr Macron hasn't set a specific goal for his plan to boost France's birth rates, instead stating he wanted the nation to have a 'dynamic birth rate'.
He also told Elle that if French people were able to have as many children as they wanted, the nation's birth rate would 2.3, but he didn't state this was the objective of his campaign.
France's fertility rate of 1.8 is the lowest the country has recorded since shortly after the end of WWII.
