Angers demography : a symbol of attractiveness and an issue for progress

Credit Pictures : Angers Développement

According to figures publis-hed by the French Institut national de la statistiques et des études économiques (Insee), Angers would have recorded a decrease of its population between 2006 and 2011. That year, the number of Angers inhabitants was below the threshold of 150 000 (148 800 exactly) while they were about 152 000 in 2006. That situation, which has been pointed out by Christophe Béchu, challenger of the current Angers mayor, Frédéric Béatse, will lead to a reduction of the number of town councillors as soon as the next municipal elections. They will be 55 instead of 59 until 2014. But the impact goes well beyond the political assembly.

At a departemental scale, the demographic figures are more favourable. The Maine et Loire population has

increased during the same period by 24 000 inha-bitants. The number of persons living in Maine et Loire was 790 000. But that evo-lution is largely due to the natural balance, i.e. the number of inhabitants less the death plus the birth. So it has few to do with an arrival of new inhabitants came there because of jobs opportunities. Moreover, the increase in Maine et Loire is well below that of Vendée and Loire-Atlantique.

These figures could mean that the Maine et Loire and especially Angers have (no yet) sufficient attractiveness to galvanise their demography. Demography is, at the same time, the origin and the consequence of many economic evolutions. If candidates are unable to stimulate natural increase of the Maine-et-Loire and Angers demography, there task could be to favour the arrival of new households having qualifications as workers and purchasing power as consumers. That forces to work on the economic environment of the labor and the consumption, two factors on which the authority of local representatives are limited. Nervetheless, it's not a reason to refrain from doing something. That will surely be one of the utmost topics of the electoral campaign. Happy New Year to the readers of Angers Daily News!