What was the effect of increasing population in france
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Answer:
For almost a century France has had a population problem of increasing acuteness. Since 1880 the French population has remained almost stationary near the figure of forty million. And the birth rate has declined steadily until in recent years it no longer has been sufficient to assure replacement of the population.
At the same time, France’s neighbors were showing very marked increases in population. The French figure rose about one-third in the century from 1830 to 1930 while those for Italy and Germany doubled. Had there been a 1940 census, France would have made an even poorer showing since by that year territorial additions had given Germany a population twice as big as that of France.
Moreover, very significant changes were taking place within the forty million total of French population. Once the most populous country of Europe, France in 1930 was far less densely populated than its neighbors. As a result, immigration from Germany, Italy, and Spain during the interwar years provided France with a population that by 1930 was already about 7 per cent of foreign origin.
Furthermore, the French population was the oldest in Europe and growing older. That is, the proportion of the population composed of people over 60 was large and growing larger; the proportion composed of people under 20 was small and growing smaller. That kind of situation obviously did not make for a high birth rate. Neither did another characteristic of the French population: the marked excess of women over men. In 1930, not counting the foreign element, there were 111 females in France to every 100 males. This was an unbalance between the sexes greater than in any other country of Europe and one still further exaggerated since 1940 by the absence of nearly two million Frenchmen held in German prison and work camps.