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How Demographic Change Transforms France

7

Birth Rates

A child holds a protest sign reading "More children, less unemployment" during a demonstration against the family policies of the French government in Paris. Despite such protests, France already has the European Union's highest birthrates. In 2003, France's natural population growth, excluding immigration, made up almost all natural population growth in the EU and fertility rates continued to increase. (Photo: Reuters)

Longevity

France's Louis de Cazenave, one of the last two French survivors of the First World War, attends a ceremony at his home in Brioude in November 2007. De Cazenave is 110 years old and the oldest man in France.

Like many other European countries, France is facing an rapidly aging society. Average life expectancy at birth is now at almost 80 years, one of the highest in the world. (Photo: Reuters)

Pension Reform

Commuters wait for a train at a metro station in Paris in November 2007, when transport unions had gone on strike to protest pension reforms. French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to do away with pension privileges that allow some public sector workers to retire 2.5 years earlier than the norm. (Photo: Reuters)

Health System

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon (R) attends open-heart surgery on an 8-year-old child from Burkina Faso at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris in December 2007.

The French health care system was ranked first worldwide by the World Health Organization in 1997. Other studies have shown that the country had very low rates of chronic diseases, such as cancer or heart attacks. (Photo: Reuters)

Integration

A young Muslim girl wearing a headband that reads "fraternity" as she protests on a Paris boulevard against a ban on religious symbols in French state schools.

France's tradition of strict secularism is causing unrest among migrants who insist on wearing religious symbols like headscarves in public institutions. (Photo: Reuters)

Second-Generation Immigrants

Firemen extinguish a burning car torched during clashes in a suburb of Strasbourg in November 2005. Thousands of cars were torched nation-wide during a week of unrest in many of France's poor suburbs, where many immigrants live amid high unemployment and poverty.

The riots started after the accidental death of two teenagers in an eastern suburb of Paris. The youth had tried to hide from the police in a power substation where they were electrocuted. The incident and the ensuing riots led to intensive debate about ethnic discrimination in France. (Photo: Reuters)

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