France

In spite of difficulties in the 1970s France has experienced striking growth since 1945. Her planned economy has forged ahead and her population has risen from 40,500,000 (1946) to 53,400,000 (1979). Between 1935 and 1945 the crude birth rate had averaged only 15 per thousand and the crude death rate 16 per thousand, but after the Second World War these values changed dramatically. The birth rate was inflated to an average of 20 per thousand between 1946 and 1954, and then gradually stabilized to 16.5 per thousand in 1970, by which time the death rate had fallen to a mere 10.6 per thousand. The French ‘baby boom’ lasted longer than in other West European countries, but immigration also played a vital complementary role in what has been popularly called the French ‘demographic miracle’ (Clarke, 1963). Decolonization, and especially the loss of Algeria in 1962, led to repatriation of 1,260,000 French nationals during the last quarter century (McDonald, 1965, 1969). In addition, France attracted foreign workers in large numbers to plug gaps in her indigenous labour force resulting from an excess of deaths over births during both world wars and the depressed years of the 1930s. The general objective of maintaining the labour force has been achieved, indeed it actually grew from 18,850,000 to 22,468,200 between 1954 and 1978. Urban employment expanded rapidly, with jobs in transport and communications rising from 24.2 per cent to 31.5 per cent of the national total, those in banking and administration from 13.8 per cent to 22.2 per cent, and those in building from 6.7 per cent to 8.9 per cent. By contrast, employment in manufacturing and mining contracted from 28.7 per cent to 27.9 per cent of the enlarged workforce, and jobs in agriculture, forestry, and fishing declined dramatically from 26.6 to 9.5 per cent. The economic and demographic buoyancy of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to relative depression during the 1970s. By 1978 the birth rate had plunged to 13.9 per thousand, while the death rate stood at 10.2 per thousand (Dumont, 1979). Unemployment levels were high and many foreign workers had returned home. The phase of dynamism was over and the objectives of both national planning and regional development had to be adjusted in the light of this new and depressing condition.