The leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, denounced on Twitter a “hidden balance sheet” of infant mortality in France. According to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France is even just ahead of Romania.
#Holland, #Macron, a hidden record: since 2014 for infant mortality, France has moved from 4th to 22nd place in Europe. Right in front of Romania. https://t.co/PSw0J8xZ16
– Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) November 22, 2021
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not far from the truth concerning the classification of France. According to Eurostat data, we are below the European average, in 20th place with 3.8 deaths of children under one year of age per 1,000 births in 2019. On the other hand, the 4th place put forward by Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not go back to 2014 but to 2004, at a time when the European Union had fewer countries.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, however, takes a shortcut by linking this drop in the ranking to an increase in infant mortality in France. In fact, over the last decade, this indicator tends to stagnate with slight fluctuations depending on the year, as shown in this table from the INSEE. A slight increase is indeed noted between 2014 and 2019, from 3.4 deaths to 3.8.
At the same time, however, infant mortality tended to decline in other European countries. This improvement abroad partly explains why France is doubled in the rankings while the death rate in France is still quite low.
In addition, the still unconsolidated data of the INSEE for 2020 show a mortality rate which would have started to fall again recently with 3.6 deaths per 1,000 births that year.
How, however, can this trend towards the stagnation of the infant mortality rate in France be explained? Several avenues are mentioned: increasingly late pregnancies, more twins more often born prematurely … But these avenues are only hypotheses because very few studies exist on this subject. Ten years ago already, the Court of Auditors regretted that this subject was not sufficiently analyzed.