Back to home page

France (Paris) 46

POPULATION

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 - 51th YEAR, NUMBER 1

96.46.1 - French - Sophie PENNEC, INED, 27 rue du Commandeur, 75675 Paris Cedex 14 (France) Four-generation families in France (La place des familles à quatre générations en France) (p. 31-60)

In the past, households that contain retired persons in a family consisting of four successive generations were rare, but the situation is different today. This study is based on cohorts of females born between 1920 and 1950 and seeks to determine the proportion of women who are at present, or may in the future, live in such families after having reached the age of 50. It is shown that women born in 1950 are now more likely than those born 30 years earlier to belong to a four-generation family. 26 per cent of the women born in 1920 lived in such families at the age of 50 or older, compared with 44 per cent of those born in 1950. We construct a simple model to help compensate for the lack of data but, more importantly reconstitute various generations from data on mortality and fertility alone. This makes it possible to assess the impact made by mortality and fertility on the observed increase, and to take account of the detailed reconstitution of the family, and more especially the place of women in such lineages. It is shown that the expected increase in four-generation families is mainly due to increased life expectancy, and especially increased longevity of parents, and an increase in the number of women who reach very old ages. (FRANCE, FAMILY COMPOSITION, GENERATIONS, WOMEN)

96.46.2 - French - Michèle BIEGELMANN-MASSARI, Institut de Démographie, Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) Civil marriage dispensations in France 1960 à 1992. I. Choosing a relative as one's spouse (Les dispenses civiles au mariage de 1960 à 1992. I. Le choix d'un parent pour conjoint) (p. 61-92)

The French Code Civil prohibits certain marriages and allows others to be celebrated only with the prior authorization of the Head of State, who decides whether or not to grant "dispensation" based on information about the applicants' motivations and their occupations, and which contains recommendations from officials who processed their request. In this paper, we study dispensations which involve marital ties or blood relationships. Since the number of applications for dispensation is decreasing, a study of the files supports some hypotheses about the present declining trends in the numbers of marriages, and more especially the decisive impact of women's economic activity. (FRANCE, CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGE, HOMOGAMY)

96.46.3 - French - Richard WALL, Cambridge group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Cambridge (U.K.) Problems and perspectives. Comparing households and families at the European level (Comparer ménages et familles au niveau européen : problèmes et perspectives) (p. 93-116)

Classification of households and their members are not interest provided they help to identify key characteristic of family and residence models. Those outlined here satisfy this need by indicating the number of individuals of different sexes, ages, and marital status who are living as a couple, or as single parents, as well as the number who are living with relatives, with unrelated persons, or on their own. The figures show how many people in a given age group are part of a nuclear family, co-reside with relatives, or belong to a household which includes this type of nucleus. Tables in this study provide evidence for the assessment of co-residence calculated from sample (one per cent) of the Censuses of England and Wales for 1981 and of Great Britain in 1991. In the beginning, attention is given to individual's position in the household. This was based on the hypothesis that a detailed approach to inter-personal relationships would result in a better understanding of residence models. Finally, tables were designed to provide better information on the characteristics of households that include unrelated persons to indicate de facto marital status, or single parenthood, and to point out the relative rarity of non-traditional households i.e. of those which consist of other than single individuals; couples with children but no other co-residents, and childless couples. (EUROPE, HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION, FAMILY COMPOSITION, COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS)

96.46.4 - French - Marie-Hélène CAZES, INED, 27 rue du Commandeur, 75675 Paris Cedex 14 (France), and Pierre CAZES, LISE-CEREMADE, Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris (France)

Assessing the genealogical depth of an ancestry (Comment mesurer la profondeur généalogique d'une ascendance ?) (p. 117-140)

Many studies in genetics and historical demography rely on family reconstitution, beginning with one individual and his or her ancestry. Information from such genealogies varies depending on the number of the individual's ancestors who can be identified. Traditional assessments of kinship or consanguinity ratios are often based on such reconstitutions. This reinforces the need for information from these genealogies to be quantified in order that individual situations may be compared. In this paper it is shown that an index which is supposed to provide information about the average length of an ancestry may lead to inconsistant results in some cases, and two new indices and their associated variances are introduced which eliminate inconsistencies and can be used to measure average genealogical lengths. (POPULATION GENETICS, METHODOLOGY, GENEALOGY)

MARCH-APRIL 1996 - 51th YEAR, NUMBER 2

96.46.5 - French - Alain BLUM, INED, 27 rue du Commandeur, 75675 Paris Cedex 14 (France), and Irina TROITSKAJA, Department of Demography, University of Moscow, Moscow (Russia) Mortality in Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Local assessments based on the Revizii (La mortalité en Russie aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Estimations locales à partir des Revizii) (p. 303-328)

Little is known about the historical demography of the Tsarist empire, as the study of historical demography never really developed in Russia. But there exist valuable sources, richer than in most European states, during the eighteenth century which can be used by researchers. In this paper we briefly describe the revizii - census-type nominal data which were preserved for the most part, and which cover the period from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and use them to construct mortality tables for the Moscow region between 1750 and 1850. We compare our estimates with other mortality tables for the period, and with attempts to construct tables in Russia during the later half of the nineteenth century. We show that in the middle eighteenth-century mortality in Russia was comparable to that in France, but that a century later, Russian mortality remained unchanged, whereas French mortality had declined markedly. (RUSSIA, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY, MORTALITY TRENDS, LIFE TABLES, HISTORICAL SOURCES)

96.46.6 - French - Richard LALOU, ORSTOM, Dakar (Senegal), and Thomas K. LeGRAND, Département de Démographie, Université de Montréal, Montréal (Canada) Child mortality in towns and villages in the Sahel region (La mortalité des enfants du Sahel en ville et au village) (p. 329-352)

Over the last 40 years, health conditions have both improved and deteriorated in Third World cities. In the 1950s and 1960s, urban areas were privileged places to live in as regards to health. Since then, the very rapid population growth in many cities has often not been matched by an adequate expansion of sanitation and health services. Cities, and especially the poorer unzoned neighborhoods, have become synonymous with precarious and unhealthy living conditions. In this paper, we begin by defining a conceptual framework to study the health of children by place of residence. We then use data from Child Mortality Surveys in the Sahel (EMIS), conducted in the towns of Bamako and Bobo-Dioulasso and in a rural area in Senegal, to ascertain whether cities remain advantaged in terms of health. Mortality is found to be higher among young rural children, especially during the second year of life, even when compared to that in underprivileged urban neighborhoods. However, on the whole, the estimated effects of individual and household characteristics on children's survival are very similar in cities and in rural areas. (AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA, INFANT MORTALITY, YOUTH MORTALITY, RURAL-URBAN DIFFERENTIALS, MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH)

96.46.7 - French - Rossella PALOMBA, Institut de recherche sur la population, IRP, Rome (Italy), Luciana QUATTROCIOCCHI, ISTAT, Rome (Italy) Images of the changing Italian family (Images de la famille italienne en mutation) (p. 353-368)

Changes in the structure of Italian families throughout the 1980s are assessed by comparing data from the ISTAT surveys of 1983 and 1990. The results are presented from the individual's point of view and we show how they fit into different familial configurations. Marriage remains the central element in Italian families, and the choice for young adults is easy: either they remain in their parental household, or they marry - most commonly in order to have children. Among those aged 30-39 the number of single parents has increased following a moderate increase in marriage breakdown. Diversity in family structures tends to appear primarily during the final stages of life at the time of widowhood. Family structures remain simpler in Italy than the neighbouring Western countries, but the strong continuity in family structure does not mean that there been no changes, only that it is more difficult to capture them by statistical methods. (ITALY, FAMILY COMPOSITION)

96.46.8 - French - Michèle BIEGELMANN-MASSARI, Institut de Démographie, Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris (France) Civil marriage dispensations from 1960 to 1992. II. Post-humous marriages love or convenience? (Les dispenses civiles au mariage de 1960 à 1992 II. Le mariage posthume : mariage de raison ou mariage d'amour ?) (p. 369-396)

In December 1959 amendments to the French Code Civil made it possible to marry one's deceased "fiancé(e)". This provision which is specific to French law has generated slightly fewer than 50 requests annually submitted to the President of the French Republic. An examination of these requests and of the socio-demographic profiles of the petitioners - most commonly women - forms an extension to our study of dispensations based on consanguinity. It also confirms that women's occupational activities strongly influence their negative views of the institution of marriage. The economic aspects involved in any union become apparent irrespective of any attempts mode to highlight the emotional dimension of such petitions. (FRANCE, TYPES OF MARRIAGE, DECEASED)

Back to home page