Abstract
THE annual number of births in France reached its maximum towards the end of the Second Empire, when it was so high as 1,034,000 in 1868. In 1934 it had fallen to 677,000 and in 1935 to about 650,000, of which nearly 50,000 were the children of foreigners. The birth-rate has therefore diminished by 384,000 or nearly a third, although the population has increased since 1868 by three million immigrants or naturalized persons, which has resulted in increasing the population from 38 to 48 million inhabitants. During the period 1900-35, the birth-rate has decreased by nearly 100,000. The number of births per marriage has decreased even more rapidly. In 1800 the average number of births in France was 4.5 per marriage, at the end of last century it was 3, and to-day only 2-2, or a diminution of about fifty per cent.
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Fall in French Birth-Rate. Nature 139, 146 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139146c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139146c0