France accounts for HALF of Western Europe's population growth (2009, new construction)

[censusdata]

Since 2000 nearly half of Western Europe's 10 million net gain in population has occurred in France, which added 4.7 million resident or 7.5%.

Has anyone been to France lately and noticed a boon in new construction?

Western Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[kerouac2]

Yes, it looks like the French birth rate is going to overtake Ireland. They said on the news yesterday that the birth rate so far this year is 2.07.

[Jaggy001]

Zut alors! Having that 3rd child is finally beginning to pay off.

[Shizzles]

Just curious: Is it mostly the ethnic French having the children, or the large African/Asian/Maghreb population? It'd be interesting to watch a European country transition btw ethnic groups.

[censusdata]

Originally Posted by kerouac2

Yes, it looks like the French birth rate is going to overtake Ireland. They said on the news yesterday that the birth rate so far this year is 2.07.

According to this link their fertility rate was just below the replacement rate of 2.1 last year, it listed it at 1.98. That's way above most European countries where the fertility rate is below 1.5

[Minato ku]

These data are wrong, Spain growth (due at the huge immigration since the last decade) is clearly underrestimed (46 million in 2009).

Originally Posted by Shizzles

Just curious: Is it mostly the ethnic French having the children, or the large African/Asian/Maghreb population? It'd be interesting to watch a European country transition btw ethnic groups.

We don't have enouth minorities to have the majority of kids from ethnic minority as any european country.
Of course a quite large part are non white due at our big minorities and the large interracial mixing.
In France don't have ethnic data.
We know that 20% of kids born in 2008 have at least a foreigner parent but this include european immigrant and don't include non white french.

PS : To break the myth, there is no concept of "ethnic french", the people that use this term confuse it with white french and a really signifiant part of the white french population have foreign roots. (we speak of foreign root for people that have at least a grand parent immigrant)

[kerouac2]

People are always insinuating that it is immigrants who are making all of the babies. Not only is the percentage of immigrants too small to make much of a difference, but the birthrates of various ethnic groups that move to Europe align themselves on the birthrate of the country within one generation.

However, it was mentioned that since the year 2008 had 366 days instead of 365, this can change the number of births in a year by a fraction of a fraction.

[NewCalifornian]

A long time ago, I saw a porjection of the population of Europe's biggest nations: Germany and France. Germany will shrink from 80 Million to 60 Million (2030) while France will increase from 60 Million to 100 Million! That means it will soon be the most influental country in the European Union. I think most of the children are born from the several ethnicities who migrated and not so much from white French. Because there is a general trend that the population of white people is shrinking (in the US and in Europe) for several reasons.
Many just want to have a good life and they believe that children are annoying, time consuming and need too much money. But how can the others raise their children?

[Huckleberry3911948]

its the same as here, people with money dont have the kids the immigrants do.
last i heard birthrate for french girls was low.

[pigeonhole]

Originally Posted by Shizzles

Just curious: Is it mostly the ethnic French having the children, or the large African/Asian/Maghreb population? It'd be interesting to watch a European country transition btw ethnic groups.

Most of the growth is due to the ethnic groups, especially Africans, with one exception : Traditionalist French Catholic families, who have a lot of children (as many as African families sometimes!)