Trente Glorieuses

Les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty") refers to the thirty years from 1945-1975 following the end of the Second World War in France. The name was first used by the French demographer Jean Fourastié. Fourastié coined the term in 1979 with the publication of his book Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975 ("The Glorious Thirty, or the Invisible Revolution from 1946-1975"). The term is derived from Les Trois Glorieuses ("Three Glorious Days"), the three days of revolution on 27–29 July 1830 in France.

Over this thirty-year period, France's population and dirigiste economy grew rapidly. These decades of economic prosperity combined high productivity with high average wages and high consumption, and were also characterised by a highly developed system of social benefits. The French standard of living, which had been damaged by both World Wars, became one of the world's highest. The population also became far more urbanized; many rural départements experienced a population decline while the larger metropolitan areas grew considerably, especially that of Paris. Ownership of various household goods and amenities increased considerably, while the wages of the French working class rose significantly as the economy became more prosperous. As noted by the historians Jean Blondel and Donald Geoffrey Charlton in 1974,

"If it is still the case that France lags in the number of its telephones, working-class housing has improved beyond recognition and the various 'gadgets' of the consumer society – from television to motor cars – and now purchased by the working class on an even more avid basis than in other Western European countries".

Since the 1973 oil crisis, France's economy, while still faring well under François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, slowed down its explosive growth. Thus, the mid-1970s mark the end of the period.

See also

• Economic history of France
• Post-World War II economic expansion
• Record years - a term used to describe this period in Sweden