The French Exodus

The quality of life in France is good, but if you are young and ambitious, it's not a place that allows you to succeed.

Edouard Jozan

An estimated 2.2 million French citizens, about 4% of the population, have joined a wave of emigration. According to the Foreign Ministry, there has been a 40% increase in the number of those registering at French consulates abroad since 1995. People are leaving for all sorts of reasons, of course, ranging from :

• greater opportunities
• higher salaries
• romantic entanglements
• the search for a foreign utopia that might not exist
• two people leave France every day for tax reasons alone.

But for the most part, those leaving are not wealthy retirees looking for a place in the sun; they are talented and ambitious young people in their 20s and 30s who have left because they felt they couldn't advance their careers at home, or because they were simply frustrated by the French system. Read original article in Time magazine