As of 1 January 2025, the population of France stood at 68.6 million inhabitants, of which 2.3 million live in the overseas departments of France (départements d’outre-mer, DOM). The population continues to grow but the pace of this growth is slowing, due, firstly, to a fall in the birth rate—driven both by a reduction in the number of women of reproductive age and by declining fertility—and, secondly, to an increase in the numbers of deaths, caused by population ageing. With the exception of the overseas departments, where positive natural population change persists, France’s population growth is solely due to migration. Population growth is weakest in rural departments (a 0.1% increase in inhabitants between 1 January 2024 and 1 January 2025) and strongest in the DOM (a 0.4% increase over the same year). All departments are experiencing population ageing, but this is occurring particularly quickly in the DOM; nonetheless, the age structure of the latter remains younger than elsewhere.