The latest issue of Insee Première (” Two pacs for three weddings. Demographic report 2009 “, Anne Pla and Catherine Beaumel, demographic studies and Surveys division, Insee, January 2010) is devoted to the demographic overview of France. The trends sketched in the previous years are continuing : decline in the number of marriages, maintenance of a high level of fertility rate, increase life expectancy…to The 1st of January, 2010, and 64.7 million people who live in metropolitan France and the overseas departments (Dom), of whom 62.8 million in metropolitan france. With the 780 000 residents of the overseas territories, the total population of the French territories has now reached 65.4 million inhabitants.
The pacs is more and more recipe…
The pacs seduced very many opposite-sex couples : in 2009, if 175 000 couples have chosen the pacs, and are 95 % of the partners of opposite sexes. Conversely, the number of marriages is loss of speed : 256 000 marriages were celebrated in 2009, which is 3.5 % less than in 2008.
Of marriage and of the births of more later
In 2008, the average age at first marriage of men 31.6 years old and for women 29.7 years. Since 1990, irrespective of the gender, the age at marriage has increased by an average of one year every six years. At the same time and for the for the first time the average age of childbirth has crossed the bar of 30 years in metropolitan france. The average age at delivery has increased across Europe, and France is in the european average.
France, a country fruitful
In Europe, France remains the leading european countries in terms of fertility, with Ireland and the United Kingdom. If in 2009, the number of births declined 7 500 compared to 2008, this decrease is explained mechanistically by the fact that 2008 was a leap year and by the decrease of the female population 15 to 50 years old between 2008 and 2009. The number of births outside marriage are now the norm in France : in 2009, 53 % of babies are born outside marriage, compared to 52.5 % in 2008 and 37 % in 1994. This is not the case in Greece (6 % of all births), Italy (22 %) or Germany (32 %).