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Article: Fertile France is not so conservative after all ; Our Man in Paris
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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France is a happy country, confident about the future. It is a
dynamic, rapidly changing country, where old social certainties are
being allowed to disappear with little more than a Gallic shrug.
Pardon? By their statistics you shall know them. An avalanche of
official numbers has poured into the French public domain in recent
days. Taken together - and added to a rather startling statistic of
my own - they defy the standard image of France as a country basking
in gloom and resistant to change.
Here are a few of the numbers:
2: the average number of babies born to women of childbearing age
in France last year. France now has the highest fertility rate in
the European Union, overtaking ...