Recent Demographic Developments in France: A Decline in Fertility, an Increase in Mortality
Magali Mazuy, Magali Barbieri, Didier Breton,Hippolyte d’Albis
On 1 January 2016, the population of France was 66.6 million (of which 64.5 million in metropolitan France), an increase of 3.7 per 1,000 over the previous year. Fertility decreased, from 1.98 children per woman in 2014 to 1.93 in 2015. This decrease was observed notably in young women. The number of residence permits issued – close to 200,000 in 2014 – increased slightly, and permit holders represent 0.3% of the population. More than half of permits were issued to women. The number of marriages (among both opposite-sex and same-sex couples) decreased slightly. Heterosexual unions were more often officially registered through a PACS civil partnership, and same-sex unions through marriage. The number of divorces decreased, as did the divorce rate; fewer minor children were affected by a divorce. There were more deaths in 2015 than in 2014, notably due to greater seasonal mortality. As a result of this mortality peak, life expectancy decreased significantly, by 0.3 years for men and
0.4 years for women.
Covering the Costs of Divorce: The Role of the Family, the State and the Market
Cécile Bourreau-Dubois et Myriam Doriat-Duban
The aim of this article is to identify all the costs of divorce and to review the various coverage instruments – private and social – used to cover those costs. In terms of economic analysis, divorce can be considered as a risk since it is possible to establish a probability of occurrence and the amount of the costs involved. Divorce risk is private in that it affects the wealth of the former spouses. The private costs it engenders may be covered by a range of instruments, some based on private solidarity, organized ex post (alimony) or ex ante (community of property marriage contracts), and others on individual precautionary strategies (remaining on the job market, savings, insurance, separate property marriage contracts). Divorce is also a social risk, in that it generates socially costly externalities (lone parenting, poverty, gender inequalities), whose scale may be reduced by implementing appropriate social and tax policies.
Data Sources on the Older Population in Europe: Comparison of the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS ) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE )
Katherine Keenan, Else Foverskov, Emily Grundy
The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) are two widely used European longitudinal surveys with data on socio-demographic and health topics, but their comparability has not been systematically investigated. We compared SHARE and GGS data for 50-80 year olds in seven European countries (Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland) to assess data quality and the potential for joint analyses. The results showed that information on age, gender, marriage and fertility patterns and the corresponding distributions were broadly similar in both sources. For some countries, distributions by educational level varied between the two sources even though both reported using the same International Standard Classification of Education, which may reflect variations in the timings of surveys. The differences also observed for estimates of the prevalence of poor health might come from the wording of health questions and their placement in the questionnaire that sometimes differed between the surveys. We investigated what effect these variations might have on analyses of health inequalities by undertaking multivariable analysis of associations between education and marital status and two standard health indicators: self-reported health (SHR) and long-standing illness (LSI).
Demography and Famine: A Pioneering Article
Seventieth Anniversary of Population
Isabelle Séguy et Christine Théré present and analyse an article by Jean Meuvret published in 1946
Book review
Gender: History, Inequalities (1)
