France in the 20th century : Post-World War II growth
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France |
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The end of World War II marked a decisive economic and social turning point. The war cost France about 600,000 dead, but this was less than half the death toll of World War I. The French population surged significantly in the late 1940s, reversing decades of little growth. By 1962 the population had reached 46.5 million, by 1975, 52.7 million, and by 1995, 58.1 million. Some of this increase was due to more births among native-born French women, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1990s, with the spread of birth control and the aging of the French population, population increases came largely from immigration, mostly from southern Europe and northern Africa. By 1975 about 4 million immigrants lived in France, making it more racially and ethnically diverse than at any time since the barbarian invasions of the early Middle Ages. Immigrants provided much needed labor in boom periods, but when unemployment rose in the 1980s and 1990s, their presence was resented. This resentment prompted support for the anti-immigrant policies of the National Front. Prejudice against immigrant workers was also fueled by their comparatively low standard of living. |
Increasing population, government planning, funds from the Marshall Plan, and greater European integration sparked a boom in industrial production, which rose 80 percent between 1950 and 1958. Agriculture was transformed by additional mechanization, as the number of tractors increased sixfold between 1945 and 1980. As productivity rose, the number of farmers declined steeply, from 35 percent of the population in 1945 to 6 percent in 1990, nearly severing the nation from its peasant roots. The economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.5 percent between 1949 and 1959, and 5.8 percent between 1959 and 1970. Altogether, the gross national product increased fivefold between 1946 and 1977. Since then, economic growth has been more sluggish, due partly to oil price increases in the 1970s and the 2000s and to increasing competition from abroad. |
The benefits of this growth trickled down to ordinary citizens in the form of increases in real wages, especially after 1960. A large variety of consumer goods became widely available and affordable, raising the standard of living. Higher standards of living led to growth in the service sector of the economy, which by the 1990s absorbed more than half the national work force. The state became an increasingly important employer as the range of government services and pensions expanded. The government established a system of state-sponsored medical care, which paid the major costs of treatment for most citizens. Slowly the state also expanded its educational and research institutions. Between 1950 and 1984, the number of baccalaureate students rose from 32,000 to 249,500, reflecting the increasing |
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France landscape. alexwallace.co.uk |
importance of education and the declining importance of land as the basis for a successful career. These changes were accompanied by a slow change in the status of women. Women were granted the vote in 1944, and they improved their levels of education. Contraception and abortion were legalized in the 1970s, giving women more control over their reproductive lives. By 2000 women provided 45 percent of the national work force |
Although women made many gains since World War II, they did not achieve political representation in proportion to their numbers. Thus, for example, in 1993 women held barely 6 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. During the 1990s, feminists and their sympathizers lobbied for a “law of parity” that was intended to force the nomination of more female candidates. Enacted in 2000, this law required that at least half of all candidates chosen by parties to run for municipal office be women. It also reduced state subsidies to parties that declined to meet this requirement. Most French voters supported the law as a means to rectify the gender imbalance. The law had some success in reducing gender inequality, but it did not produce gender-balanced political representation. |
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Picture of french landscape. alexwallace.co.uk |
Some parties evaded the law by accepting lower government subsidies. Encarta |
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