The “Denatality Complex”:The Demographic Argument in the Birth Control Debate in France, 1956-1967
Virginie De Luca Barrusse
In 1956, a campaign by the French family planning movement (Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial) to repeal the law of 31 July 1920 banning abortion and the sale and advertising of contraceptives sparked a fierce debate in the French media. The campaign finally achieved its goal on 28 December 1967 when the Neuwirth Act was passed, lifting the ban on contraception. The demographic argument seems to have been the one most insistently and persistently used by participants in the debate, who pointed up the potential demographic consequences of changing the law. This article examines this demographic argument, i.e. a reasoning that drew
on considerations about population viewed as a geographically and historically situated collective unit. We show that it was the product of a sensitivity to population issues which was reflected in values quite widely shared in the media, notably a “pro-birth position” that reflected a preference for fertility that was sufficient to ensure population growth.
Career choices and the gender pay gap: the role of work preferences and attitudes
Isabelle Bensidoun, Danièle Trancart
The gender wage gap has barely narrowed over the last two decades. This may be partly attributable to gender differences in work preferences and attitudes. Drawing on data from the “Génération 1998 à 10 ans survey” conducted by CÉREQ in France, this article examines the potential roles of career priorities, appetite for risk or optimism about future career prospects on gender wage gaps. As these factors are liable to influence wages, but also career choices, this study uses a wage gap decomposition that takes them into account. It also factors in the potentially discriminatory nature of occupational segregation. Differences in preferences and attitudes
account for 6.3% of the total wage gap, nearly twice as much as experience. They also reduce the unexplained component of wage differences, which nonetheless remains large. Ten years after leaving the education system, although the gender wage gap should be just 8%, women’s wages are 21.2% below those of men.
Relationships between Total and Birth-Order-Specific Fertility Indicators: Application to Spain for the 1898-1970 Cohorts
Daniel Devolder
This article analyses the general relationships between general fertility indices and parity progression ratios by birth order. The former refer to the entire population whereas the latter concern persons who have had the same number of children. We establish a relationship between these two types of indicators by defining a mean parity progression ratio (PPR). This allows us to obtain a unified scale to represent these two types of indicators in a single graph. This mean probability can also be used to calculate fertility with small samples. Applications to different types of data, by cohort and by year, are presented. A decomposition of variations in general fertility
indices as a function of variations in PPRs, including mean PPR, is also proposed. These relationships and methods are applied to the fertility of Spanish cohorts born between 1898 and 1970.
De Jure and De Facto Deaths. The Impact of Unregistered Attendees and Absentees on Urban Death Rates in Early Twentieth-Century Belgium
Tina Van Rossem, Patrick Deboosere, Isabelle Devos
Unregistered temporary migration can create large discrepancies between death rates according to the legal, factual or habitual residence of the deceased. The most accurate death rates are those that refer to population numbers based on habitual residence, as they concern the population fully exposed to the hazards of a specific municipality. Using the Belgian population census, the register of vital events and individual death certificates, we calculate the death rates of the population with habitual residence in three large Belgian cities (Brussels, Liège and Schaarbeek) around 1910 and compare them with the typically calculated rates based on de facto
deaths. Most significantly, the presence of medical institutions in large cities such as Brussels and Liège artificially increased the rates based on deaths within their territory. In the suburb of Schaarbeek, on the other hand, large numbers of people with habitual residence died outside the town. Consequently, our results suggest that for some age groups, Brussels’ well-known excess mortality during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can partly be attributed to the large number of people without habitual residence who died in the capital.
Assessing the Contribution of Foreign Women to Period Fertility in Greece, 2004-2012
Christos Bagavos, Georgia Verropoulou, Cleon Tsimbos
This study assesses the contribution of migrant childbearing to the overall fertility of a receiving country based on the case of Greece between 2004 and 2012. More specifically, the main aim of the paper is to evaluate the relative contribution of the “fertility behavior” of foreign women and of their share in each age-group to overall fertility in Greece. On the basis of population estimates and of births derived from vital statistics, age-specific fertility rates and total fertility rates (TFRs) are calculated for foreign and Greek women (women born in Greece to Greek parents). The fertility of foreign women is much higher than that of Greek women for all years, although both groups exhibit similar fertility trends. In the period under consideration, the combined effect of foreign fertility and of the share of foreign women in the population increased overall TFR by between 0.06 children per woman (4.4%) and 0.14 children per woman (9.3%). The contribution of foreigners to changes in overall fertility over time is smaller, however. The driving force behind fertility changes is fertility behaviour; population composition effects are minor.
Political Exclusions Attributable To Poor Relief In Early Twentieth-Century Finland
Elina Einiö, Hanna Wass, Miia Heinonen
Finland was a pioneer in the democratization of Europe, granting women the right to vote on equal terms with men as early as 1906. In principle, men and women from all social classes were permitted to vote and stand for election. However, a proportion of the adult population – those who regularly received poor relief – was excluded from suffrage. Using internationally unique microdata on over 19,000 poor-relief recipients and the corresponding population registers of two provinces in Finland, we estimated the extent to which gender and age determined disenfranchisement due to poor relief during the 1911 parliamentary elections. Our results indicate that a
disproportionate share of women, and especially of older people, were disenfranchised due to poor relief. The analysis provides novel evidence of the hidden discriminatory effects of an early welfare scheme. The system of poor relief not only provided support for older people in need but also disqualified many of them from political citizenship and introduced gender inequality in basic rights.
