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“French shall be the only language of education”, proclaimed the Ministerial Order of 7 June 1880 laying down the model primary school regulations. “The language of the Republic is French”, recently added article 2 of the Constitution (1992). But do ...

How many people in france are aware that married women are not legally required to take on their husband’s surname ? in fact, the opposite is true: according to the law of August 23, 1794, still in force today, no ...

Only in the last two centuries have human beings started to practice effective family limitation. Methods of contraception and abortion have existed for much longer, but were not a part of everyday life. Etienne van de Walle examines those mentioned ...

Is it possible to put figures on acts of violence, defined as the fact of inflicting physical and psychological abuse on a person? For many people, violence is a daily experience — the result of a relationship based on power ...

Demographic and economic statistics are usually published for each country separately; this practice, however, restricts their significance. Of course, there is nothing untrue in stating that the world’s five most populated countries contain half the world’s population, or that the five wealthiest countries account for ...

People are regularly asked in sample surveys whether they wish to have children in the future. Can we rely on their answers to predict birth rates in the years to come? Why, in some cases, do their wishes not come ...

There is surprising evidence that the number of unwanted pregnancies ending in abortions has held relatively constant in France for the past twenty years, notwithstanding the spread of modern contraceptive methods which can be assumed to be highly effective. We ...

After reaching 6 billion in 1999, the world population will attain 6.5 billion this year and should total 7 billion in seven years’ time, in 2012 or 2013. To inform the public about key population issues, answer their most frequently ...