The work of l'Atelier parisien d'urbanisme (or Apur) is right in my wheelhouse. Run by an architect, they are a group that analyzes, documents, and then develops strategies for urban matters impacting Paris and Greater Paris (la Métropole du Grand Paris). For example, last year they published a book called Paris Atlas, which contains 150 original maps and lots of statistics about the city. And this month, they published a note talking about population and demographic trends in the city. Here's a brief summary of this latest report.

As of January 1, 2022, there were 7,115,576 people in Greater Paris:

Between 2016 and 2022, its population grew by about 0.2% per year or about 14,800 people per year. This is slower than the previous reporting period (2011 to 2015). It's also all because of natural births:

When it comes to migration, more people leave the city each year than come to it:

This runs in contrast to a city region like Toronto, where the vast majority of our population growth comes from positive net migration. This is also true of Canada as a whole. Still, Paris is not immune to lower birthrates and a declining average household size:

Another factor impacting population, according to the report, is the decline in principal residences (homes occupied for more than 6 months of the year) and the rise of what the report calls "unoccupied homes", which includes secondary homes and vacation rentals. As of 2021, the number of "unoccupied homes" was estimated at approximately 19.2%:

However, in four arrondissements (1, 6, 7, and 8), the number of homes not used as a principal residence is thought to exceed 30%! This is making it even harder to build enough new homes. For example, between 2015 and 2021, Paris built approximately 30,300 new homes. (Reminder, the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area completed about that many in one year last year.) But at the same time, the city counted 14,600 fewer principal residences. This is, I guess, what happens when you're one of the most visited cities in the world.

To end, I'll leave you all with this population density map:

The darkest areas represent more than 250 people per hectare. That works out to more than 25,000 people per square kilometer (just divide the above numbers by 0.01). At the same time, between 2016 and 2022, the population of Paris proper (not Greater Paris) decreased by an average of 12,800 people per year. This is in comparison to an average decrease of 11,900 people per year for the period of 2011 to 2016. As is the case in many/most cities, Paris' population growth is happening largely in the suburbs and in the outskirts.

Cover photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

In 2023, there were 379,000 babies born in Italy. This is down from 393,000 babies in the prior year and represents a new record low. Already in 2022, the number of births was noted as being the fewest since Italy's unification in 1861. The result is a "demographic winter." Of course, this challenge is not unique to Italy. It is happening in most developed countries. Korea, for example, has a fertility rate somewhere around 0.72 babies per woman. Because of this, there are a lot of people in the world trying to figure out how to encourage more births.

Here is Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni:

Meloni, herself a mother of a single child, has said it is a priority for her government to increase the birth rate and encourage women to have more babies “for the simple reason that we want Italy to have a future again”.

So what's causing this?

One seemingly logical explanation could be that the employment rates for women and men are basically the same now. Fewer women are staying at home and so there's less time to have and raise children. In fact, the opposite is true. If you look at fertility rates across Europe, high birth rates tend to correlate with high employment rates for women. I guess families need to be able to afford children. Here's an excerpt from a Guardian article (c. 2015) on the topic of fertility:

The map of the fertility rate in European countries more or less overlaps with that of women in work. In countries with relatively buoyant populations, such as France and Scandinavia, women play an important part in the labour market. According to data for 2010 published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the employment rate for women aged 24 to 54 in work was 83.8% in France, 84.4% in Finland, 85.6% in Denmark and 87.5% in Sweden, barely lower than the equivalent figures for men. In contrast, in southern Europe and Japan the share of women in work was much lower: only 64.4% of them had a job in Italy, 71.6% in Japan, 72.2% in Greece and 78.3% in Spain.

Staying on the theme of being able to afford kids, another possible explanation might be that kids are expensive and so you need strong family-friendly government policies to help support them. While this I'm sure helps, there's data to suggest that the correlation between these policies and birth rates is actually fairly weak. That's why, even though many developed countries have expanded such policies, birth rates continue to fall. Here's a graphic by John Burn-Murdoch from FT:

So what the hell is it then? Well there is another possible explanation and it is that it's more of a cultural thing. In the above article, John makes the argument that a number of other more important factors are leading to declining birth rates. Namely, more people are choosing to live alone, and not as a couple. Priorities have shifted, where family formation is no longer seen as central to a fulfilling life. And more young people are generally anxious. (He doesn't get into why but I'm sure that it's possible to blame TikTok.)

But what really stood out to me was this graphic:

Since the 1960s, parenting has gotten systematically more intense for parents. The average number of hours per day spent by mothers on "hands-on parenting activities" has grown significantly in most developed countries. However, there is one clear exception: France. It turns out that the French are, at least based on this data, less likely to be so-called helicopter parents. Parenting is less hands-on, kids get more freedom and -- perhaps because of this -- France has the highest fertility rate in Europe at over 1.8 babies per woman.

This is not to say that France's family-friendly policies aren't doing something as well. I would imagine they are. But the above makes intuitive sense to me. If you create an environment where the threshold to be considered a good parent is constantly becoming more duanting and more life-consuming, it's no surprise to me that more and more people are simply saying, no thank you.

The National Center of Health Statistics just released this update on births and birth rates for the United States in 2017. The provisional number of births last year was 3,853,472, which represents a 2% reduction from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years. The general fertility rate was 60.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, which represents a 3% reduction from 2016. Also a record low.

Here is a chart from the report showing birth rates for selected age ranges from 1990 to 2016 (the 2017 numbers are provisional):

Many of the age ranges have remained stable. Notable are the decline in the teenage (15-19) birth rate and the increase in births to women aged 40-44. The teenage birth rate declined 7% from 2016 and has averaged a decline of nearly 8% a year since 2007. And the birth rate for women aged 40-44 has generally been rising since 1982.

I am sure that you can all think of many explanations for the above phenomena without even diving into the report. I find all of this relevant because demographics obviously impact the real estate business and how we build cities.