Recent Demographic Developments in France: Some Differences between Overseas Départements and Metropolitan France
Magali Mazuy, France Prioux, Magali Barbieri
The total population of France on 1 January 2011 is estimated at 65 million, of whom 1.9 million reside in overseas départements (DOMs). With growth of 11.2 per 1,000 in 2010, the DOM population is growing at twice the rate of metropolitan France (5.4 per 1,000), and its age structure is younger. Its fertility is slightly higher, at 2.4 children per woman versus 2.0 for metropolitan France in 2010, and the mean age at childbearing is younger (28.5 years and 30 years, respectively). The frequency of abortion in the DOMs is distinctly higher, and repeat abortions more common. The number of marriages in France remained stable in 2010, while that of civil unions (PACS) continued to grow but at a slower pace. Civil unions and marriages are celebrated at almost identical ages, but the age gap between civil partners is slightly smaller than for married couples. The frequency of divorce among longer marriage durations has increased considerably in the past 30 years. Life expectancy at birth in 2010 was estimated at 78.0 years for men and 84.7 years for women. Men have registered greater gains than women in the past 20 years, and the gains for both sexes increasingly concern mortality after age 65. Life expectancy at birth in the DOMs almost matches that of metropolitan France, but infant mortality is at least twice as high.
Labour Market Integration of Young People from the French Overseas Départements: At Home or in Metropolitan France?
Franck Temporal, Claude-Valentin Marie, Stéphane Bernard
Since the mid-twentieth century, France’s overseas départements (DOM) have seen intense migration, with criss-crossing flows of DOM native-borns leaving and returning, alongside migrants from France and other countries. Practically all of the DOM native-borns who emigrate - mainly towards metropolitan France - are working-age adults who leave their home for work or educational purposes. This study measures the scale of these migration flows and describes their complexity, focusing on the selection mechanisms at play among leavers and returners, notably in terms of educational level. We also examine the conditions of integration of DOM native-borns in their place of destination and assess the benefits of migration for those who return, the youngest especially (ages 18-34), by comparison with their elders (ages 35-64), the aim being to shed light on the changes which, from one age group to another, have marked this powerful and long-standing migration tradition. The original findings of the Migrations, Family and Ageing survey (MFV), and of the Trajectories and Origins survey (TeO), associated with census data from the DOMs and metropolitan France, provide scope for detailed analysis of the population of DOM native-borns, whatever their place of residence, and for a better understanding of the dynamics involved.
Below Replacement Fertility Preferences in Shanghai
M. Giovanna Merli, S. Philip Morgan
China has joined the group of low-fertility countries; it has a total fertility rate somewhere in the range of 1.4 to 1.6. Much speculation about China’s future fertility depends on whether individual’s fertility intentions and preferences are much higher than the state’s fertility goals. If so, then a relaxation of family planning restrictions could lead to a substantial fertility increase. We directly asked a probability sample of Shanghai registered residents and migrants whether a policy relaxation would lead them to have additional children. Our results show that small families (one or two children) are intended in this urban setting. If family planning policy were relaxed, a relatively small fraction (fewer than 14%) report that they would revise their intentions upward. Even this modest increase (as much as 10%) is suspect because factors that can deflate fertility relative to intentions are likely more powerful than the inflationary ones (in Shanghai). These empirical findings help ground speculations on the future of fertility in the hypothetical absence of policy constraints.
Estimating the Number of Immigrants in Spain: An Indirect Method Based on Births and Fertility Rates
Luis Rosero-Bixby, Teresa Castro-Martín, David Reher, María Sánchez-Domínguez
This article proposes an indirect method to validate existing estimates of immigrants’ stock from the Spanish municipal population register, which some believe might be over-counting immigrants who double register in different municipalities or fail to deregister when leaving the country. The proposed method uses two pieces of information: births to immigrants and their fertility rates. Data on births by parents’ origin come from the Spanish birth registry; fertility rates are estimated with data from the 2007 National Immigrant Survey. For female immigrants, the indirect estimate does not differ significantly from the count in the register, which can be taken as a validation of both sources. Among men, however, the population register counts 15% more immigrants than the indirect estimate, and this difference is statistically significant. Western European men and women, and Romanian men are immigrant groups with substantial and statistically significant excess count in the population register compared to this article’s estimate. The opposite pattern, i.e. ratio of register-to-estimated number of immigrants lower than one, is found for Ecuadorian men and women and African men, suggesting that these groups might be under-counted in the population register, although the observed differentials are not statistically significant.
Living Together Apart in France and the United States
Claude Martin, Andrew Cherlin, Caitlin Cross-Barnet
Using data from exploratory surveys conducted in parallel in the United States and France among two different socioeconomic groups, this article examines why certain couples continue to share the same home after their relationship has broken down. The authors explore how the specific features of these contemporary living arrangements differ from similar situations in the past, and propose several hypotheses about the current signification of cohabitation and the family bond (as a combination of conjugal and parenting ties). Despite very different conceptions of marriage and cohabitation in the two countries, these situations of "living together apart" (LTA) and the meaning of such LTA relationships for the persons concerned are quite similar on both sides of the Atlantic. The testimonies of LTA couples show how their conjugal trajectories are shaped by financial and material constraints, limiting access to marriage or to divorce. The respondents consider that living together apart enables both partners to fulfil their parenting role, the father especially, and protects the children from the financial consequences of divorce, especially in a social context of economic crisis.
Pellagra in Late Nineteenth Century Italy: Effects of a Deficiency Disease
Monica Ginnaio
In many countries across the world at different times, a diet made up exclusively of maize led to the development of B3 avitaminosis, or pellagra. Caused by extremely limited nutrition, B3 avitaminosis is a deficiency disease due to insufficient intake of niacin and tryptophan. From the late eighteenth century up to the time of the First World War, pellagra was endemic in Northern Italy, particularly in the Veneto. The "sickness of the poor" and the turmoil it caused affected a single social class whose diet consisted entirely of cornmeal polenta: farm workers, especially day labourers, a particularly underprivileged occupational category. This multidisciplinary analysis, based on various types of documentary sources, retraces the epidemiological, social, political and demographic mechanisms that led to the spread of pellagra, primarily among women farm workers of reproductive age in the Veneto and Lombardy regions. Observation of the demographic impact of the disease on the female peasant population leads to a discussion of possible effects on the birth and fertility rates of the populations of these two regions in the late nineteenth century.
Johann Peter Süssmilch: From Divine Law to Human Intervention
Justus Nipperdey
The research of Johann Peter Süssmilch’s demographic theories has tended to concentrate on the enlarged second edition of his Divine Order of 1761/2. While the differences to the original edition of 1741 have been noticed, they have not been systematically analysed and explained. This article charts the development of Süssmilch’s thought in relation to the changing German cameralist discourse of the time. Both Süssmilch’s original project as its further development cannot be understood without closely correlating it to the German discourses on population and economy. Süssmilch influenced the cameralist discourse by providing a new mode of argument in favour of population politics. However, this had not been the goal of the theologian who had deliberately avoided any political interpretation of his findings in 1741. It was in the following two decades that Süssmilch became interested in the possibilities of changing demographic behaviour by political means. During the 1750s he started to engage in political arguments that peaked in the second edition of the Divine Order that was as much a book on the laws governing population as on population politics.
End of the Conjugal Relationship, Gender and Domestic Tasks in Switzerland
Boris Wernli, Caroline Henchoz
Longitudinal analyses, which track particular individuals through time, are few, and look mainly at the evolution of the division of household tasks between partners. They emphasize the growth of the time that women devote to housework when the couple and the family form, but they do not say whether this phenomenon is reversible. Does the opposite occur at the end of the relationship? What is the pattern for men? Longitudinal analysis of the data of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) shows that the end of conjugal relationships (due to separation or death) leads to a reduction of the time that women devote to housework, whereas it has little effect on men’s investment. A discussion of the various factors that may explain these results motivates us to nuance the explanatory range of the "doing gender" theory which is widely evoked in studies on the division of household tasks within couples. This theory seems more appropriate to explain the behaviour of women than that of men. The household involvement of the latter seems, indeed, to depend less on the people with whom they interact than on cultural factors such as normative references with regard to household task allocation and investment which are specific to each generation.
