Population 2020, n 4

Recent Demographic Trends in France: Situations and Behaviours of Minors
Didier Breton, Magali Barbieri, Nicolas Belliot,Hippolyte d’Albis, Magali Mazuy 

Leaving the Child Welfare Services: From Institutional Housing to the Initial Steps on the Housing Market
Pascale Dietrich-Ragon 

Duration and Intensity When Estimating Smoking-Attributable Mortality: Development of a New Method Applied to the Case of Lung Cancer in France
Michel Grignon, Thomas Renaud 

Repopulation Following the Spanish Expulsion of the Moriscos, 1610–1800: A Malthusian Perspective
Francisco J. Marco-Gracia

Recent Demographic Trends in France: Situations and Behaviours of Minors
Didier Breton, Magali Barbieri, Nicolas Belliot,Hippolyte d’Albis, Magali Mazuy

On 1 January 2020, France had a population of slightly above 67 million people, of whom 14.4 million were under age 18. The downtrend in births continued (754,000) in 2019, as did the ongoing increase in deaths (612,000). Natural increase is still the main driver of population growth. Inflows of foreigners from outside the European Union and Switzerland increased in 2018 (249,474 arrivals, up 4.9% from 2017). One in 10 incoming migrants were minors. The total fertility rate remained practically stable in 2019 (1.87 children per woman), and the increase in mean age at childbearing continued. Births to mothers under age 18 accounted for 0.5% of total births. The number of abortions (230,000) and the total abortion rate (0.58) increased slightly in 2019. The steady downtrend among women under 18 continued, however, and this age group accounted
for just 3.5% of abortions in that year. Marriages (235,000) and PACS civil unions (209,000) increased in 2018, although the numerical difference between them continued to narrow. Age at marriage in France pursued its increase (35.4 years for women and 37.9 years for men). In 2018, 2.6% of marriages and 4.1% of PACS unions were between same-sex partners. Remarriage after divorce or widowhood is increasingly rare, and each divorce affects less than one minor child on average (0.91). Life expectancy is still increasing, but at a slower pace. It reached 79.7 years for men and 85.6years for women in 2019. Mortality below age 15 is very low, and most deaths in this age group occur in the first year of life. Contrary to many other European countries, infant mortality has stagnated in France.

Leaving the Child Welfare Services: From Institutional Housing to the Initial Steps on the Housing Market
Pascale Dietrich-Ragon

In France, 138,000 children and adolescents in danger—1.6% of the population aged under 18—are cared for by the child welfare services (Aide Sociale à l’Enfance). While they enter care at different ages, all must leave upon reaching age 18, when the legal duty of care ends, or at 21 if they obtain an extension contract (contrat jeune majeur). After leaving, they must provide for themselves and can no longer rely on the child welfare services for housing. Using data from the ELAP longitudinal survey on the autonomy of young adult care-leavers (Étude longitudinale sur l’accès à l’autonomie après le placement) and qualitative interviews, this article explores how these young adults find a place to live and how they perceive the experience. While they have faced housing insecurity from early on, their programmed expulsion from care is a new source of insecurity, thereby causing them stress and anxiety. In addition, access to housing is unequal. Those who follow the rules and have not left the institutional circuit get places in the best accommodations, and later a place of their own. Those unable or unwilling to comply with institutional constraints are the most vulnerable after leaving care.

Duration and Intensity When Estimating Smoking-Attributable Mortality: Development of a New Method Applied to the Case of Lung Cancer in France
Michel Grignon, Thomas Renaud

The standard method for estimating smoking-attributable mortality (SAM) does not account for smoking duration and time since cessation, which prevents analysts from running projections or what-if scenarios on changes in initiation and cessation behaviours. We propose a new method that combines the duration distributions observed in the population with empirical values for the duration effects on mortality from smoking and cessation, which are reported in the epidemiological literature. This new method is more data-demanding than the standard method, and we demonstrate its implementation on French lung cancer cases by creating pseudo-cohorts using pooled cross-sectional surveys (Baromètre Santé, INPES) from 1975 to 2010. We find that lung cancer mortality will increase by 50% until 2035, after which it will plateau. Our simulations show that
halving initiation among teenagers would save 20,500 lives over the 50-year period between 2010 and 2060, while doubling the quit rate among adults would save 53,000 lives over the same period. This study statistically substantiates the intuitive belief that interventions and policies that increase cessation save more lives in the medium term than those aimed at decreasing initiation.

Repopulation Following the Spanish Expulsion of the Moriscos, 1610–1800: A Malthusian Perspective
Francisco J. Marco-Gracia
The expulsion of the Moriscos from the Kingdom of Aragon in 1610 left many villages empty, which the authorities quickly tried to repopulate by offering ‘cheap’ plots. However, with far fewer ‘repopulators’ than expelled Moriscos, the supply of homes and land was greater than the demand. This article examines the role of Malthusian preventive checks within this context of low population pressure. Using the family reconstitution method to link microdata from parish registers, we compare five repopulated villages with three neighbouring Christian villages that had no Moriscos to expel. Because these repopulated villages show a higher population growth rate, we attempt to determine the source of this difference. Our results confirm a relaxation in Malthusian preventive checks through a decrease in age at marriage and the celibacy rate, prompting an increase in marital fertility. Yet the percentage of outmigrants was greater in the repopulated villages than in the non-repopulated localities, which curbed population growth. The worse economic situation in the repopulated villages, confirmed using wills, probably explains this trend.