Tribute to Patrick Festy

Patrick Festy passed away on 7 December 2022. Director of INED from 1995 to 1998 and an intellectual in the fullest sense of the term, he was undaunted by the exacting demands of the discipline of demography and was perhaps even captivated by them.

Born in 1945, the year INED was founded, Patrick Festy joined the Institute in January 1969. A former student at HEC, one of Europe’s most selective business schools, he also held a degree in literature and a doctorate in economics. He was, of course, an expert demographer. His doctoral thesis, from which emerged a seminal book in INED’s Travaux et Documents series, focused on the evolution of fertility in Western countries from 1870 to 1970. The study of contemporary demographic trends was to occupy the entire first part of his career. He was first director of the Demographic Trends II research unit and then headed the Contemporary General Demography Department. As editor-in-chief of the journal Population (1989–1995), he authored several reports to parliament on the demographic situation in France. Under his leadership, Population embarked on its transformation into an international journal, both in terms of its authors and its readership.

Patrick Festy was a remarkable eminent researcher. In the 1970s, when studies were focused on exploring the individual determinants of demographic behaviour, he turned his attention to the contextual factors of this behaviour, and more specifically, the effect of law on family behaviour. The relationship he established with Louis Roussel, who referred to ‘deinstitutionalization’ to describe the evolution of marriage and divorce, led him to associate the two rigorous disciplines of law and demography, bringing them into dialogue around the study of divorce in France and Russia. In the early 1990s, he led a network with Irène Théry and Marie-Thérèse Meulders-Klein, a Belgian jurist, for the study of stepfamilies. He later returned to this approach, focusing on the legalization of same-sex couples and then on the comparative history of marriage in the Nordic countries.

His study of divorce in Russia and young people’s transition to adulthood in Albania led him to examine the effect of social protection systems and private solidarity on living conditions. This new direction is best illustrated through two European projects on the care of future older adults, FELICIE and MAGGIE, which he coordinated in the 2000s with Joëlle Gaymu. Patrick Festy’s publications include his many articles and books, but he also loved collaborative work, particularly through multidisciplinary or international research networks.

It was in this context that the International Comparisons research unit was created on his initiative. The contribution of the ‘national’ dimension to demographic studies stimulated his interest and thirst for explanation, comparison being a condition for understanding. Attentive to data quality and harmonization, he and France Prioux conducted research on the operating methods of major international fertility and family survey programmes, and then coordinated the evaluation of microdata from European censuses. More recently, he supervised the development of the contextual database of the European Generations and Gender programme.

Secretary General and Treasurer of AIDELF from 1979 to 1984, he was also active in disseminating demographic research in French.

All those who knew Patrick Festy also appreciated his sense of humour, his kindness, and his humility.