‘If France had 100 inhabitants’

IF FRANCE was a village of 100 people, then nine of them would be fonctionnaires - one of the interesting facts Le Monde has illustrated in a population feature on its website.

On a page titled If France had 100 inhabitants, the paper shows with simple visuals that 51 people in the “village” are female and 49 male, 24 are under 20 and 18 over 65, and nine were not born French.

A total of 35 are married – showing the institution is still popular – and just two are pacsed. Twenty four are children being raised by couples while four are being raised in single-parent homes.

Apart from the nine people working for the state, there are 37 in the private sector, four working for themselves and eight unemployed (another 42 are unaccounted for in the data, presumably including retirees).

Five are badly housed – or not housed at all – and 18 people live in the Ile-de-France. Seventy-eight live in towns and 22 in the countryside.

The examples came from the latest data from national statistics body Insee.