Recent Demographic Developments in France: Relatively Low Mortality at Advanced Ages
France Prioux, Magali Barbieri
France had 65.3 million inhabitants as of 1 January 2012, including 1.9 million in the overseas départements. The population is slightly younger than that of the European Union as a whole. Population growth continues at the same rate, mainly through natural increase. There are now more African than European immigrants living in France. Fertility was practically stable in 2011 (2.01 children per woman), but the lifetime fertility of the 1971-1972 cohorts reached a historic low in metropolitan France (1.99 children per woman), nevertheless remaining among the highest in Europe. Abortion levels remained stable and rates among young people are no longer increasing. The marriage rate is falling and the divorce rate has stabilized (46.2 divorces per 100 marriages in 2011). The risk of divorce decreases with age, but has greatly increased among the under-70s over the last decade. Life expectancy at birth (78.4 years for men, 85.0 for women) has continued to increase at the same rate, mainly thanks to progress at advanced ages. Among European countries, France has the lowest mortality in the over-65 age group, but it ranks less well for premature mortality.
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Changes in Family Situations as Reflected in the French Censuses, 1962-2009
Laurent Toulemon
Censuses provide a means to count the population and to describe its main characteristics at all geographical levels. French census data from 1962 to 2006 are available via the IPUMS-I project of the University of Minnesota, and data for the years 2006-2009 are accessible on the INSEE website, so changes in family situations over the last fifty years can be described in detail. With the fertility decline and population ageing, the proportion of "children" has decreased. The other major changes (increasing share of persons living alone or in lone-parent families, fewer situations of co-residence with adult children or other relatives) follow very different patterns by sex and age. The same is often true for disparities between social groups (identified by occupational group, educational level or place of residence) and their evolution. The switch to annual census surveys in France provides new opportunities for analysing annual data, at least at national or regional scale, even though the census is designed to group the data from five successive annual waves.
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The Most Frequent Adult Length of Life in the Eighteenth Century: The Experience of the French-Canadians
Nadine Ouellette, Jean-Marie Robine, Robert Bourbeau, Bertrand Desjardins
Over the last ten years, the modal age at death has become a focus of research on human longevity, notably because it provides information about the most frequent adult age at death without being influenced by mortality conditions at early ages. Little is known about levels and trends in adult modal age at death in historical populations. The RPQA is a historical data source recognized for its reliability which sheds new light on adult longevity in the eighteenth century. The data used, detailed by sex and year of age, cover the period 1740-1799. To estimate modal age at death, this study uses an innovative nonparametric P-spline smoothing method known to be flexible and highly effective. The analysis reveals that the most frequent age at death of adult French-Canadians increased over the period, rising from around 73 years to almost 76 among women, and from around 71 years to more than 74 for men. The specific living conditions of the French-Canadian population at that time may explain this substantial rise.
Realization, Postponement or Abandonment of Childbearing Intentions in Four European Countries
Balázs Kapitány, Zsolt Spéder
This study investigates the realization of time-related positive fertility intentions using a comparative approach. Four European countries of medium size are compared, all with rather different fertility regimes: the Netherlands and Switzerland in western Europe, and Hungary and Bulgaria in the east. Using harmonized data from four panel surveys conducted in two waves between 2000 and 2007, a typology of fertility intentions and outcomes (postponement, abandonment or realization) can be constructed using multinomial logistic regressions. Age is a universal factor of success and failure in realization of intentions; above 35 years postponement and abandonment become frequent, and abandonment generally increases with age. In the eastern post-communist countries, younger age groups do not postpone as much as women around their 30s. Childless people postpone, and higher parity parents abandon more, but certain countries deviate from this pattern: Bulgarians postpone if they have one child, and the Swiss abandon in case of childlessness. The higher educated are generally more accurate planners, especially when successful realization versus abandonment are compared. Findings are gender related in Hungary: employed women and unemployed men are clearly over-represented among abandoners.
Estimating Changes of Residence for Cross-National Comparison
Daniel Courgeau, Salut Muhidin, Martin Bell
This short paper considers a number of temporal and spatial models that can be used for international comparison of internal migration levels across all countries of the world. First, among the various spatial models used, the model linking migrations to the zoning of the territory provides a simple summary of this relationship, but its parameters do not have a clear plain language meaning for international comparison. Second, the "migrant-migration" model derives an instantaneous rate based on migrant numbers measured over variable durations that is independent of multiple and return moves occurring over a longer interval. International comparison is thus only possible for the instantaneous mobility rate (change of residence), a standard indicator whose meaning is clear. The authors use numerous examples to show that the simultaneous use of both types of models provides a means, under certain conditions, to approximate such a rate, that can be linked to the parameters of these models. The validity of these models can be tested and confirmed using data from countries where direct measures of changes of residence are available.
The Diffusion of Smoking in East and West Germany: Smoking Patterns by Birth Year
Christina Westphal, Gabriele Doblhammer
Smoking is among the most important risk factors for population health and premature mortality. Smoking trends for Germany indicate that smoking has been spreading according to the assumptions of diffusion theory. This paper presents empirical evidence for smoking diffusion in Germany. We focus on educational differences as well as on differences between East and West Germany in the propensity to start (ever smoker) and quit smoking (former smoker). We use a birth year perspective to depict the historical development of smoking behaviour. Our analyses are based on data from four waves of the German Microcensus (1995, 1999, 2003 and 2005) in which respondents are asked about their smoking habits. We focus on cohorts born in 1970 and before. We present age-specific ever and former smoking rates by education for men and women in East and West Germany and apply interaction models to analyse whether these differences are significant. Our results confirm the assumptions of diffusion theory for Germany in that men are ahead of women in the process of diffusion, and smoking patterns differ between educational groups. Moreover we find different smoking patterns for women in East and West Germany.
