De-facto relationships in France - PACs

Last week, in my French class, we were given a newspaper article about the lives of women in France since the 40s, particularly after the 70s.
It mentioned the work, baby, marriage thing (which of course is a hotly debated topic in any country!)...

So anyway, I found out that a de-facto relationship in French is called a concubinage, a union libre or a PACs (which stands for "pacte civil de solidarité", meaning a civil union between 2 people, including homosexuals). PACs has been around for 10 years.

I found two recent articles about the rising popularity of being PACsed in France here and here.

In the second site (France info) there is an interesting graph with statistics at the slightly decreasing rate of marriage and rapidly rising rate of PACsing. It's in Flash so I have uploaded it as a jpg here (click on it to see it larger).

I think the topic is quite fascinating as everyone knows that in most Western countries the age of first marriage and first baby is increasing, and birth rates are generally declining. Also, in France, there isn't as much of a religious impact on people's daily lives so having a de-facto relationship without marriage, or having a child without marriage seems totally OK there because they are so free and liberal...

Both websites are in French so if you can't read it you'll have to use Babelfish or another translator. There are quite a few audio files on the second site too which are good for listening comprehension practice. :)

The age at first marriage seems to the oldest in certain European countries including France. It's also quite old in Australia (stats from nationmaster).

Women

# 1 Sweden: 30.4 years
# 2 Denmark: 30.1 years
= 3 France: 29.1 years
= 3 Spain: 29.1 years
= 5 Norway: 28.6 years
= 5 Australia: 28.6 years
= 7 Finland: 28.3 years
= 7 Netherlands: 28.3 years
= 9 Ireland: 28.2 years
= 9 Switzerland: 28.2 years
= 9 Germany: 28.2 years
# 12 Austria: 27.9 years
# 13 United Kingdom: 27.7 years
# 14 Canada: 27.4 years
# 15 Japan: 27.3 years
= 16 Italy: 27.1 years
= 16 New Zealand: 27.1 years
# 18 Belgium: 26.6 years
# 19 United States: 25 years

Men

# 1 Sweden: 32.9 years
# 2 Denmark: 32.5 years
= 3 France: 31.2 years
= 3 Spain: 31.2 years
# 5 Norway: 31.1 years
# 6 Germany: 30.9 years
# 7 Switzerland: 30.8 years
# 8 Netherlands: 30.7 years
# 9 Australia: 30.6 years
# 10 Finland: 30.5 years
# 11 Austria: 30.3 years
= 12 Italy: 30 years
= 12 Ireland: 30 years
= 12 Japan: 30 years
# 15 United Kingdom: 29.8 years
# 16 New Zealand: 29.2 years
# 17 Canada: 29 years
# 18 Belgium: 28.9 years
# 19 United States: 26 years

According to the chart

Average age of (first I assume) marriage (2006)
Men 37.6, Women 35.6

Average age of (first I assume) being PACsé (2006)
Men 31.5, Women 32.9