Abstract
Number of inhabitants: 64,350,759 people (on 1st January 2009), that is to say around 1 % of the global population. The population of France is growing. The demographic growth rate in France is of 0.574 % per year. The number of births is quite high in France. Indeed, there were 801,000 live births in France in 2008, an unequalled number since 1981. This fact is still more amazing when we discover that women aged from 20 to 40 years old who have given birth to 94 % of the babies of 2008, are decreasing. Indeed, the generations born during the baby-boom of post-war years are progressively being replaced by less abundant generations. This means that women continue to have on an average more children than during the 1990's. The French birthrate is of 2.02 children per woman. This rate is higher than the one measured in many other European countries. It is, for instance, only of 1.3 in Germany, 1.4 in Italy or 1.5 in Spain. It is even less (1.3) in Poland and Slovakia, and is situated between 1.3 and 1.35 in Slovenia, Lithuania, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Portugal. This phenomenon may be explained by a favorable political and social environment.
