grants and credits to France, 1946–53, came to $4.9 billion, and low-interest loans added another $2 billion. The Marshall Plan set up intensive tours of American industry. France sent 500 missions with 4700 businessmen and experts to tour American factories, farms, stores and offices. They were especially impressed with the prosperity of American workers, and how they could purchase an inexpensive new automobile for nine months work, compared to 30 months in France. Some French businesses resisted Americanization, but others seized upon it to attract American investments and build a larger market. The industries that were most Americanized included chemicals, oil, electronics, and instrumentation. They were the most innovative, and most profitable sectors. Claude Fohlen argues that: In all then, France received 7,000 million dollars, which were used either to finance the imports needed to get the economy off the ground again or to implement the Monnet Plan....Without the Marshall Plan, however, the economic recovery would have been a much slower process – particularly in France, where American aid provided funds for the Monnet Plan and thereby restored equilibrium in the equipment industries, which govern the recovery of consumption, and opened the way... To continuing further growth. This growth was affected by a third factor... decolonization. Les Trente Glorieuses: 1947–1973 Between 1947 and 1973, France went through a booming period (5% per year in average) dubbed by Jean Fourastié Trente Glorieuses, title of a book published in 1979. Between 1946 and the end of the 1960s, the population grew by a record 30%. By 1967, one in three adults was under the age of 20. Population growth was due not only to a higher birth rate, but to a declining mortality rate fueled by improvements in medical care, housing, and nutrition. The infant mortality rate fell from 52.0 in 1950 to 18.2 in 1970. The economic growth was mainly due to productivity gains and to an increase in the number of working hours. Indeed, the working population was growing very slowly, the baby boom being offset by the extension of the time dedicated to studies. Investment as a percentage of GNP rose from around 20% per annum in the 1950s to a peak of 24.7% in 1974, the highest in Europe. Because of currency controls and "the limited mobility of international capital", lenders invested at home and not abroad. Investment fueled continual improvements in production methods, making products like automobiles