The Demographic Impacts of the Sieges of Paris, 1870-1871
Denis Cogneau, Lionel Kesztenbaum
Paris came under siege twice between September 1870 and May 1871, first by the Prussian army and then by the Versailles government’s assault on the Commune. The first resulted in a severe famine; the second in a bloodbath. We investigate the impact of this crisis on child mortality, adult height, and adult mortality, using original vital records and military register data from one of the city’s lowest-income areas. Deaths more than doubled at all ages during this period, and under-5 mortality rates increased by 30% for children born in 1869 and 1870. Those conceived and gestated during the crisis ended up significantly shorter and faced 40% higher adult mortality than unaffected cohorts born afterwards, but children aged 2–5 later recovered in height as living conditions quickly improved. A nutritional shock’s translation into short-term variations in stature and into lifetime survival thus seems to depend not only on the shock’s duration but also on preceding and subsequent living conditions, which themselves interact with selection effects and critical age windows for physiological growth.
Differences in COVID‑ 19 Mortality: Implications of Imperfect and Diverse Data Collection Systems
Jenny Garcia, Catalina Torres, Magali Barbieri, Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Emmanuelle Cambois, Arianna Caporali, France Meslé, Svitlana Poniakina, Jean-Marie Robine
The worldwide COVID‑19 emergency has led to substantial variations in the data collection process across countries scrambling to produce real-time information, resulting in imperfect mortality statistics. To address this problem, we analyze COVID‑19 death counts from the Demography of COVID‑19 Deaths database (https://dc-covid.site.ined.fr/en/) and discuss their limitations. We describe and illustrate important data-related issues that may hinder international comparisons. To alleviate these difficulties, we classify sources according to their data’s completeness then analyze and compare death counts for 16 countries. Finally, we discuss the importance of understanding data collection characteristics and provide recommendations for dealing with imperfect statistics.
Lone Parent Seeks Apartment: Housing Discrimination and Family Status in Paris
Laetitia Challe, Julie Le Gallo, Yannick L’Horty, Loïc du Parquet, Pascale Petit
Despite a growing body of research on discrimination, the role of family status in access to housing in France has not been explored. Yet discrimination of this kind may severely affect people’s lives. We present a paired audit’s findings on the private housing rental market in Paris, where homes are in short supply and lone-parent families are over-represented. Between December 2017 and late March 2018, four requests for visits were sent in response to 791 rental ads, or 3,164 messages. One of the fictitious individuals had a male partner and two children; the other three, one man and two women, were lone parents. This study is a statistical analysis of the answers to these inquiries. We provide evidence of discrimination against lone mothers on the Parisian rental market. The lone mother with children was treated less well in certain cases, notably when enquiring about larger apartments (2–3 bedrooms). One possible explanation lies in the status of lone mothers with children, whom agents and andlords may see as presenting a risk of financial insecurity, thus reducing their chances of finding a home of this kind to rent.
Educational Inequalities Between the French Overseas Territories and Metropolitan France: The Determinant Role of Parents’ Transmission of Human Capital
Emmanuel Valat
Individuals born in the French overseas departments and regions (DROMs) have lower levels of education than those born in metropolitan France. Improving young people’s levels of education is an important issue for the DROMs, as education is closely linked to the economic development of these territories. To define effective public policies, however, the precise reasons for these lower levels of education must be understood. This study is based on data from the Migration, Family, and Ageing and Trajectories and Origins surveys, conducted respectively in the DROMs and in metropolitan France, and including many identical questions. The results indicate that almost all the educational inequalities between young people from French overseas territories and metropolitan France are explained by differences in families’ material and financial situations, parents’ social and cultural origins, and the family living environment during childhood. These elements can influence parents’ transmission of human capital to children. When these characteristics are similar, levels of education among young people from the DROMs (excluding French Guiana) and metropolitan France are also similar. These results suggest directions for sharpening the focus of public policies in order to reduce educational inequalities between the overseas territories and metropolitan France.
Sharing or Not Sharing? Household Division of Labor by Marital Status in France, 1985–2009
Lamia Kandil, Hélène Périvier
This paper examines why the division of domestic labor among couples differs according to marital status. We analyze how the gender division of labor in France has changed, drawing upon time-use surveys (1985, 1998, and 2009). In 1985 and 1998, married women performed a larger share of domestic labor than cohabiting women. Differences in the observed characteristics of married and cohabiting couples explain this gap in 1985, whereas by the late 1990s cohabiting couples opted to organize themselves less unequally than married couples, all else being equal. In 2009, women’s average share of domestic labor was about the same, whether they were cohabiting or married (72% and 73.5%), but it was significantly lower (65.1%) for women in civil unions. This result can be explained by the self-selection process of couples based on their gender values, as civil partnerships attract more egalitarian couples.
