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The Demographic Situation in France

Volume 58 2003/4-5

Discipline > Revue > Sommaire > Article

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Recent Demographic Developments in France

France Prioux []* France Prioux, Institut National d’Études Démographiques, 133 bd Davout, 75980 Paris Cedex 20, Tel: 33 0(1) 56 06 21 44, Fax: 33 0(1) 56 06 21 99,

Résumé de l'article

Natural increase in France remains one of the highest in the European Union, since the age structure of the population remains relatively favourable to births over deaths. Estimated net migration in France is relatively low compared with that in neighbouring countries, though the number of residence permits issued to aliens has increased considerably in recent years.
After a strong increase in 2000, the total fertility rate was unchanged in 2001 and 2002 (1.89 and 1.88 births per woman). The upturn between 1995 and 2001 is largely due to first births. The recovery of fertility at younger ages wasnot confirmed in 2002 and women aged 30 and over contributed most to fertility. However, completed cohort fertility declined rapidly after the 1960 cohort.
After increasing strongly in 2000, marriages declined slightly in 2001 and 2002. In a growing number of cases, at least one of the spouses is a foreign national. The popularity of the Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS) is still increasing rapidly from one cohort to the next, while the frequency of divorces is settling at around 38 divorces per 100 marriages.
Female life expectancy at birth (82.9 years in 2002) is increasing less rapidly than that of men (75.6 years) and the resulting trend to convergence can be expected to continue since excess male mortality, which is very high in France between ages 15 to 65, is declining slightly. L’accroissement naturel en France continue à être l’un des plus élevés de l’Union européenne, car la structure par âge de la population est encore assez favorable aux naissances, et relativement peu aux décès. Le solde migratoire évalué est relativement faible en comparaison denos voisins, mais lenombre de titres de séjour délivrés à des étrangers s’est beaucoup accru ces dernières années.
Après une forte hausse en 2000, l’indicateur conjoncturel de fécondité est resté stable en 2001 et 2002 (1,89 puis 1,88 enfant par femme). Le relèvement des années 1995 à 2001 est dû en grande partie aux premières naissances. En 2002, la reprise de la fécondité des jeunes ne s’est pas confirmée, et ce sont les femmes âgées de 30 ans ou plus qui soutiennent la fécondité. La descendance finale des générations diminue cependant rapidement après la génération 1960.
Les mariages ont un peu diminué en 2001 et 2002, après la forte hausse de l’an 2000; de plus en plus souvent, l’un des époux au moins est de nationalité étrangère. Le célibat légal continue à augmenter rapidement d’une génération à l’autre, et la fréquence des divorces se stabilise autour de 38 divorces pour 100 mariages.
L’espérance de vie à la naissance des femmes (82,9 ans en 2002) progresse moins vite que celle des hommes (75,6 ans), et le rapprochement qui en résulte devrait se poursuivre car la surmortalité masculine, très forte en France entre 15 et 65 ans, tend à se réduire un peu. El crecimiento natural francés sigue siendo uno de los más elevados de la Unión Europea, principalmente debido a que la estructura por edad de la población es favorable a los nacimientos y relativamente poco favorable a la mortalidad. El saldo migratorio estimado es relativamen-te bajo en comparación con el de nuestros vecinos, pero el número de permisos de residencia otorgados a extranjeros ha aumentado significativamente en los últimos años.
Después de haber aumentado fuertemente en el 2000, el índice sintético de fecundidad se mantuvo estable en el 2001 y el 2002 (1,89 y 1,88 hijos por mujer respectivamente). El aumento observado entre 1995 y 2001 se debe en gran parte a un aumento de los primeros nacimientos. En el 2002, el aumento de la fecundidad de los jóvenesno continúa; son las mujeres de 30 años y más las que mantienen el nivel de fecundidad. Sin embargo, la descendencia final de las generaciones disminuye rápidamente a partir de la generación de 1960.
El número de matrimonios disminuyó en el 2001 y el 2002, después del fuerte aumento registrado en el 2000. El número de casos en que uno de los esposos es extranjero aumenta. El celibato legal sigue aumentado rápidamente de una generación a la siguiente, y la frecuencia del número de divorcios se estabiliza alrededor de 38 divorcios por cada 100 matrimonios.
La esperanza de vida al nacimiento de las mujeres (82,9 años en el 2002) progresa con menor rapidez que la de los hombres (75,6 años), y la aproximación resultante debería proseguir ya que la sobre-mortalidad masculina, muy fuerte en Francia entre los hombres de 15 a 65 años, tiende a reducirse.

Plan de l'article

• Population growth and age structure

• Immigration between 1994 and 2001

• Fertility

— Annual fertility has reached its highest level in twenty years

— A marked increase in first births

— Completed cohort fertility

• Nuptiality and PACS

— Fewer than 300,000 marriages in 2000

— Mixed marriages and marriages between foreigners are helping to maintain nuptiality levels

— An increase in the number of PACS in 2002 and 2003

— Nuptiality of the never-married andremarriages of the divorced

• Divorce

— A slight decline in divorce

— Cohort-specific divorce probabilityis increasingly stable

• Mortality

— Improvements vary by age and sex

— Different causes at different ages

• REFERENCES

Population growth and age structure

On 1 January 2003, the total population of France was estimated at 61,387,000 inhabitants (Doisneau, 2003). If attention is limited to metropolitan France (mainland and Corsica), there were 59,626,000 inhabitants, an increase of 288,000 over the previous year (INSEE, 2003), representing a growth rate of 4.8 per 1,000 — 0.3 points lower than in 2001 (see Table 1) [1]. Since net migration is estimated to have increased slightly, this decline can only have come from a slackening in natural increase. According to the provisional estimates by INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies), the number of births decreased slightly in 2002 (763,000, or 8,000 fewer than in 2001) whereas the number of deaths increased slightly (540,000, or 9,000 more than in 2001), giving a natural increase of 223,000 persons. The rate of natural increase thus fell from 4.0 per 1,000 in 2001 to 3.7 per 1,000 in 2002.

This rate remains, nonetheless, one of the highest in the European Union (Eurostat, 2003). Excepting Ireland, where natural increase is very high (nearly 8 per 1,000), only the Netherlands (3.7 per 1,000) and Luxembourg (3.6 per 1,000) come close to France in this respect. Elsewhere, natural increase is at most about 1 per 1,000 (Denmark, Spain, Finland, United Kingdom) and in some cases is actually negative (Greece, Italy and especially Germany). By contrast, a growth rate from migration estimated at just over 1 per 1,000 in 2002 puts France [2]at the lowest level in Europe, along with Finland, while rates for Ireland, Portugal, Luxembourg and Spain are between ﬁve and nine times higher. The countries where net migration was highest in absolute values appear to be Spain and Germany, in excess of 220,000 persons in 2002 (Eurostat, 2003).

Three factors account for the persistently large natural increase in France. Fertility remains strong compared with that in neighbouring countries; life expectancy is quite high (especially for women) and still rising; and the age structure remains relatively favourable to births and not to deaths (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Age pyramid of the French population on 1 January 2003

IMGIMGAge pyramid of the French population on 1 January ...IMGIMF

Note: Birth-cohort sizes are available on the INED website (http:// www. ined. fr).

Source: INSEE.

The proportion of the population aged 20-59 also continues to grow, at the expense of that of young people under 20 (Table 2), despite the relatively high fertility observed in 2000-2002. This reﬂects the smaller size of these new cohorts compared with those born twenty years earlier, during the fertility recovery of the years 1980-1982. Taken as a whole, the proportion of persons aged 60 and over has been stable for several years, but this stability masks the aging going on within this age group, characterized by a rapid rise in the proportion aged 75 and over. This trend will become more pronounced as the “depleted cohorts” born during the First World War gradually die out, and in less than 20 years, more than one in ten of the population will be aged 75 or over (Brutel and Omalek, 2003). Net natural increase is thus scheduled to decrease gradually over the next few years in response to the changing age structure of the population. This will cause both an increase in deaths and a decrease in births, since all the cohorts born after the end of the baby boom will have reached the childbearing period.

Immigration between 1994 and 2001 [3]

Using the same sources and methods of calculation, INED continued its monitoring of the arrivals of aliens in 2000-2001, based mainly on the tabulation of French residence permits issued for stays of one year or more, in compliance with United Nations recommendations for the standardization of migration statistics (Thierry, 2001).

After declining between 1994 and 1995, years in which 120,000 and 106,000 aliens, respectively, obtained residence permits, and stabilizing in 1996, the number of residence permits [4], issued increased in 1997 (to 127,000) and especially in 1998 (156,000) (Table 3). The end of the special “regularization” programme of 1997-1998 produced a slight decline in the number of aliens issued with residence permits in 1999 (145,000). Their number rose again in 2000 (160,000) and more sharply still in 2001 (183,000). The ﬁgures for 2000 and 2001 thus exceed that for 1998, a year in which regularizations of aliens were very numerous.

Of the aliens issued with permits in a given year, a majority report having arrived in France during that same year; this proportion, in the region of 70%, is stable over time. The steady increase observed since 1996 in the residence permits issued to aliens arriving during the year is thus indicative of a real change in migration ﬂows. The number of permits issued has increased by 50%, going from 75,000 in 1996 to 113,000 in 2000 and to 128,000 in 2001.

The number of permits issued to aliens eligible for free circulation within the European Economic Space (EES) [5], has remained close to 43,000 for several years. The increase in total immigration is thus due to the ﬂow of migrants from non-EES countries, which grew by 14.5% in 2000 and by 19.6% in 2001. The proportion of immigrants from this group is growing year-on-year, partly it seems because of an under-registration of arrivals from EES countries, in particular of students. The number of students coming from the rest of the world has for its part grown sharply, going from 25,000 in 1999 to 43,000 in 2001. For all the categories of permits issued, this is the most spectacular rise over the past two years. Another important component of immigration from non-EES countries is the arrival of aliens who have family ties with French citizens; these arrivals now greatly outnumber those of persons coming to be reunited with an alien who is already resident.

The changing distribution of the grounds for issuing permits to non-EES citizens has been accompanied by a lessening of the imbalance between the sexes. Whereas in 1994, arrivals from non-EES countries comprised 116 women for 100 men, this numerical predominance disappeared completely during 2000-2001. In parallel, the proportion of single persons has risen over the years: among non-EES citizens, it has increased from 43.6% in 1994 to 46.3 % in 2001.

As concerns geographical origins, Africa has reinforced its position, accounting for 43.1% of total arrivals in 2001 (compared with 37.2 % in 1999), followed by Europe (35% and 42.1%, respectively). The countries of the Maghreb remain the source of two-thirds of immigration from Africa. The considerable increase in the number of arrivals from Morocco and Algeria in recent years has consolidated these countries at, respectively, ﬁrst and second positions in the country of origin classiﬁcation. Some ﬂows from within the European Union, such as those from the United Kingdom and Portugal, remain well placed (third and ﬁfth, respectively, in 2001). Germany, which until 2000 was among the top three countries of origin, dropped back in 2000-2001 and is now only in seventh position. Conversely, China moved up from twelfth to sixth position between 1999 and 2001.

Fertility

Annual fertility has reached its highest level in twenty years

The number of births reached its highest level since 1982 in 2000 (774,800 births). The number fell back slightly in 2001 (770,900) and even more so in 2002, for which the provisional estimate of INSEE is 763,000 births [6]. But because of the gradual reduction in the number of women of childbearing age, the total fertility rate reached its maximum level, of 1.89 children per woman, in 2001; the ﬁgures for 2000 and 2002 were very close (1.88), and much higher than the 1999 ﬁgure (1.79) (Table 4). The years 2000-2002 were thus those when fertility reached its highest level since the early 1980s.

Annual fertility in France remains the second highest in Europe, behind that of Ireland, where the indicator rose sharply in 2001, keeping that country in ﬁrst position (1.97 children per woman) (Table 6). By contrast, in Norway, where fertility has been closest to that in France in recent years, the indicator fell to 1.78 children per woman in 2001. The Mediterranean countries (Spain, Greece, Italy) remain those where fertility is lowest, with indicators below 1.3 children per woman, and in 2001 they were joined by Austria with 1.31 children per woman. German fertility has risen in the last two years and is moving closer to that in Switzerland and Portugal, where fertility fell sharply in 2001, settling at 1.41 and 1.46 children per woman, respectively. Fertility is also recovering in Sweden and is coming closer to that in the United Kingdom where it continues its downward course (about 1.6). Last, fertility is a little higher in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, with total fertility rates slightly over 1.7 children per woman.

In France, contrary to what was observed in previous years, fertility increased at all ages in 2000. Until then, the gradual recovery in the total fertility rate was in fact due mainly to women aged 28 and over (Table 4). For several years, however, the fertility of women under 28 had decreased hardly at all and at some ages even increased slightly. In 2000, while the increase continued to accelerate among the oldest women, it was so strong among women under 30 that they contributed 45% of the total increase in the indicator (Table A). Among the youngest and oldest women (under 25 and 35 or over) this increase continued in 2001, but it halted among women aged 30-34 and fertility declined at ages 25-29. In 2002, according to provisional rates [7], the trend by age resumed its more usual course, characterized by a slight decline in fertility under 30 and a very moderate increase after this age. It is possible that with the coming of the year 2000 some couples decided to realize their desire to have a child, bringing forward slightly a conception that would otherwise have resulted in a birth in 2001 or 2002.

Table A
Fertility trend by age group since 1997 (per 1,000 women)

IMGIMGAge reached Sum of age-specific fert...IMGIMF

A marked increase in first births

Statistics of biological birth order have been published by INSEE since 1998 [8] (Beaumel et al., 2003), thus making it possible to calculate age-speciﬁc and order-speciﬁc fertility rates, and to produce a new decomposition of the total fertility rate. Unfortunately, it seems that the birth orders over the life of the mother are not always satisfactorily recorded, resulting in a considerable overestimation of ﬁrst births to the detriment of higher-order births [9]. For this reason we present a corrected estimate of order-speciﬁc fertility which takes into account both the data from the 1999 Study of Family History (Étude de l’histoire familiale-EHF) survey and the recent trends recorded by vital statistics [10], (Table B).

Table B
Order-specific decomposition of the total fertility rate (number of children per 1,000 women)

IMGIMGFirst order Second order Third and h...IMGIMF

The new decomposition of the period fertility rate according to birth order allows a ﬁner analysis of recent fertility trends. From this we can see that the recent fertility increase would appear to be due exclusively to ﬁrst-order fertility: second-order fertility may even have declined slightly, while third and higher-order fertility has settled at about 0.4 child per woman. Could it be that ﬁrst-order fertility alone has recovered in recent years?

An examination of the recent past shows that the components of fertility by birth order rarely move in parallel, and that the fall in the general indicator sometimes masks rises in fertility for some birth orders (Figure 2). Thus, for example, between 1975 and 1985, while first-order fertility followed a steady downwards course, the fluctuations in the total fertility rate were mainly due to third and higher-order fertility; between 1986 and 1991, the recovery in high-order fertility, followed by that of first births, hardly slowed the downwards trend of the general indicator; between 1991 and 1994, the decrease was due to the same birth orders, while the upturn in second-order fertility went unnoticed. It is therefore entirely plausible that the current increase in fertility concerns only first births; in addition, 2001 saw the period first-birth fertility rate reach a level comparable with the completed cohort fertility of first birth order (88 births per 100 women). This recovery means simply that the long period of postponed first birth, which began in the 1970s, is probably coming to an end.

Figure 2

Order-specific decomposition of the total fertility rate (number of children per 1,000 women)

IMGIMGOrder-specific decomposition of the total fertilit...IMGIMF

Source: See Table B.

Completed cohort fertility

Three years of relatively high fertility are not enough to modify appreciably the decline in completed cohort fertility (Table 5). Indeed, the trend projection gives completed fertilities that are actually lower than those we estimated last year for the 1964-1969 cohorts (Prioux, 2002), because the tendency for fertility to recover at older ages has weakened in recent years. Between 1999 and 2002, the fertility of women aged 30 and over increased less than during the previous three years: the total increase in fertility at those ages is the equivalent of 6.5 births per 100 women, as against 7.2 in 1996-1999. This slowdown is entirely due to women of ages 30-34, the age range in which an increase in fertility is particularly needed to offset the decline in fertility at young ages. Despite the inclusion of the entire 1997-1992 period in the trend projection [11], completed fertility fell very swiftly from 2.12 children per woman in the 1960 cohort to 2.03 in the 1965 cohort. Hence it is now certain that the completed fertility of women born in the 1960s will be lower in France than in Norway (Table 7).

Nuptiality and PACS

Fewer than 300,000 marriages in 2000

Ultimately, and contrary to what we wrote last year (Prioux, 2002), according to the ﬁnal ﬁgures provided by INSEE the number of marriages contracted in metropolitan France in recent years has never gone above 300,000. After reaching a maximum of 297,000 in 2000, the ﬁgure fell back to 288,300 in 2001 and the provisional estimate for 2002 is 279,900 [12]. The rise in nuptiality is thus slightly weaker than predicted, and the total ﬁrst marriage rates have been revised downwards slightly (Table 9).

But the rise in nuptiality in 2000 isno less real for that. This increase has certain similarities with that observed in 1996 — when a change in the tax laws encouraged couples with children to legalize their union and thereby pay less tax — although it is much smaller (+ 4.1%, compared with + 10% in 1996). As in 1996, the increase concerns mainly couples with children (+ 10.4% in 2000) and especially those with two or more (+ 16%), and it is slightly larger for couples where one of the spouses has already been married (+8%) than for couples in which both partners are never married (+ 3%). In 2001, the decline is largest for marriages between ever-married persons and marriages of couples who already have children: this indicates that marriages were indeed subject to a slight”year 2000” effect, with a number of couples deciding to begin the new millennium by legalizing a longstanding union.

Mixed marriages and marriages between foreigners are helping to maintain nuptiality levels

The total number of marriages decreased in 2001 (– 3.2%) but the decline would certainly have been sharper without the large increase in recent years, and particularly in 2001, of marriages in which at least one spouse is a foreign national. Since 1998, marriages involving at least one foreign spouse, and especially mixed marriages, have been on the increase, so much so that in 2001, nearly one in six marriages (16.3% exactly) involved at least one foreign national (Figure 3). Of these, 85% are mixed marriages, the majority of which are usually between French women and foreign men [13], though marriages between French men and foreign women are currently almost as numerous: in 2001, they numbered 22,400 and 17,400, respectively.

Figure 3

Proportion of marriages involving at least one foreign spouse (per 100 marriages)

IMGIMGProportion of marriages involving at least one for...IMGIMF

Source: INSEE, vital statistics.

The foreigners who married French women in 2001 were mainly Algerians (24%), Moroccans (19.2%) and Tunisians (9.5%): in all, over half (52.7%) are nationals of north African countries. The nationality of foreign women marrying French men is much more diverse, but Algerian women (14.9%) and Moroccan women (11.9%) are also the largest groups. Portuguese women make up the third largest group (4.5%), since very few French men marry Tunisian women in France.

This increase in mixed marriages in France can be viewed in conjunction with that in mixed marriages celebrated abroad (Thierry, 2001, pp. 434-435). These marriages are both the consequence of past migration ﬂows and a cause of recent migration.

An increase in the number of PACS in 2002 and 2003

Slightly more than 87,700 ”Civil Solidarity Pacts” (PACS: Pacte Civil de Solidarité) were signed before district courts in metropolitan France between November 1999 and June 2003. After declining slightly in 2001, the number of PACS increased by nearly 30% in 2002, and ﬁgures for the ﬁrst two quarters of 2003 indicate that the increase is continuing (Table C). The success of the PACS is thus growing, and the seasonality already observed is conﬁrmed, with a marked preference for the ﬁrst and last quarters of the year, which is the opposite of the pattern for marriage (Ruelland and Tonnerre, 2003).

Table C
Civil solidarity pacts (PACS) recorded in metropolitan France

IMGIMGQuarter Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 200...IMGIMF

Has the creation of the PACS in 1999 had a negative impact on marriages? This is hard to prove, since the statistics provide no information on the age and sex of the partners. But after the slowdown in 2001, the rapid rise in the number of PACS signed in 2002 and in the ﬁrst months of 2003 suggests that it is increasingly popular among heterosexual couples. For although the exact number of homosexual couples is not known, we do know that it is very small compared with the number of unmarried heterosexual couples. According to the most recent Labour Force survey conducted by INSEE, 2.7 million women were living in unmarried couples in March 2002. The stock of unmarried couples thus represents a sizeable pool for PACS, to which a further 450,000 new unions are added every year [14] (Beaumel et al., 1999). By contrast, there is a strong probability that the number of potential candidates for PACS decreased rapidly among homosexual couples, since even though new couples are formed each year, they are far less numerous than heterosexual couples. Also, it is practically certain that this type of contract, something the homosexual community had long demanded, enjoyed from the outset a relatively large success with this group. Two facts support this. First, in the Netherlands, where statistics do record the sex of the partner, the creation of a “registered partnership” for either homosexual or heterosexual unions initially attracted many more homosexual couples (Festy, 2001). Second, in France, where a large homosexual community lives in Paris, the number of PACS contracted in the capital didnot follow the same trend as in the rest of the country: in Paris, the number of PACS peaked in the very ﬁrst months (last quarter of 1999, after only one and a half months of application), while everywhere else the peak occurred during the ﬁrst quarter of 2003. The proportion of PACS signed in Paris has fallen by half since 1999 (last line of Table C).

Nuptiality of the never-married andremarriages of the divorced

After a peak in 2000, the period indicators of nuptiality for the never-married declined slightly in 2001 and 2002. According to the provisional data, the period indicators for women in 2002 stand at 58 ﬁrst marriages per 100 women for the sum of ﬁrst marriage rates and at 65 per 100 for the overall probability of ﬁrst marriage [15], whereas they had reached 60 and 68, respectively, in 2000 (Table 9). The indicators for men follow the same trend, with very slightly lower values (two or three points lower). The levels have thus returned to those observed in 1998 or 1999. The millennium effect has been even stronger for remarriages of the divorced: in 2001, the indicator fell back to 43 marriages per 100 divorced men and 41 per 100 women, after reaching 47 and 45, respectively, in 2000 (Figure 4). Even more so than ﬁrst marriage, remarriage seems to ﬂuctuate depending on events or opportunities (changes in the tax laws in 1996, year 2000) and no lasting upwards tendency is evident.

Figure 4

Total first marriage rates (sum of age-specific rates) and total rates of remarriage of the divorced (sum of rates by duration since divorce) (per 100 men or per 100 women)

IMGIMGTotal first marriage rates (sum of age-specific ra...IMGIMF

Source: INSEE, vital statistics, and French Ministry of Justice.

The tendency to recovery in the nuptiality of the never-married since 1995 has only very slightly moderated the fall in the cohort-speciﬁc marriage frequency. The proportion of ever-married persons at age 50 is expected to continue to fall by one percentage point per cohort, to reach 68% among men born in 1967 and 71% among women born in 1969; at the same time, the mean age at ﬁrst marriage continues to rise rapidly (Table 10). These projections assume stability in behaviour at the non-observed ages [16]and could be revised downward if there was further decline in the marriage probabilities at these ages.

Divorce

A slight decline in divorce

Since 1995, the number of divorces granted annually has shown a tendency to decrease. In 2001, 112,600 divorces were granted by the courts (direct divorces or transformations of legal separations), which is 1,400 fewer than in 2000 and 6,600 fewer than in 1995, when the number of divorces peaked at 119,200 (Table 9). However, the decline in the total divorce rate is less marked, since despite the recent upturn in nuptiality the number of marriages exposed to the risk of divorce is still falling. This indicator thus stood at 37.9 divorces per 100 marriages in 2001, as against 38.2 in 2000 (the same as in 1995), after having reached a maximum of 38.9 in 1999.

The relative stability of this indicator is the product of contradictory changes. After having fallen considerably between 1995 and 1998, the probability of divorcing [17], during the ﬁrst ﬁve years of marriage started to rise again three years ago [18], (Figure 5). By contrast, a slight decline or stability has been observed in recent years for all marriage durations between 5 and 30 years, and in particular between 5 and 10 years. Finally, the probability of divorcing continues to increase at the higher marriage durations (30 years and over). Unlike what was observed in the years 1986-1989, when risks of divorcing had stopped rising only for durations between 5 and 20 years of marriage, the levelling off in recent years concerns all but the very high marriage durations. This could mean that the rise in the frequency of divorce, continuous since the end of the 1960s, is ﬁnally coming to an end.

Figure 5

Divorce probabilities for selected marriage durations since 1980 (per 1,000)

IMGIMGDivorce probabilities for selected marriage durati...IMGIMF

Sources: French Ministry of Justice and INSEE.

Cohort-specific divorce probabilityis increasingly stable

This new tendency to stabilization of the risk of divorcing is well illustrated by the trend in the divorce probability by duration of marriage in successive marriage cohorts (Figure 6). For the 1960, 1965 and 1970 marriage cohorts, the risk of divorcing rose at all durations, and the divorce probabilities continue to increase from one cohort to the next, even at the highest durations. In the later cohorts, the risk of divorce continued to increase at the early marriage durations, but thereafter the curves crisscross, and as of certain marriage durations, the risk of divorcing in each marriage cohort retreats to the level in the cohort formed ﬁve years earlier. Lastly, in the 1995 cohort, the risks of divorce for the early marriage durations are slightly lower than in the 1990 cohort. In the most recent cohorts, the highest risks have gradually become concentrated around the ﬁfth year of marriage. none the less, for couples that are still together after ten or ﬁfteen years of marriage, the probability of marital disruption remains much higher than for couples married in the 1960s.

Figure 6

Duration-specific divorce probabilities in the 1960-1995 marriage cohorts (per 1,000)

IMGIMGDuration-specific divorce probabilities in the 196...IMGIMF

Assuming stability of the divorce probabilities in the 1975 and later cohorts, we can make a projection of the ﬁnal frequency of divorce in the 1960-1990 cohorts (Table D). For the earlier cohorts (1960-1970), the projection none the less assumes that the increase in the probabilities at marriage durations of 30 years and over will continue for a few more years. After doubling from 16% in the 1960 cohort to 32% in the 1975 cohort, the frequency of divorce increased much less rapidly in subsequent cohorts and may stay below 38% for the 1990 cohort if the behaviour of recent years remains unchanged. Almost half of the divorces in the 1960 cohort involved couples that had been married for around 16 years or more (median duration: 15.7 years); in the 1990 cohort, half of the divorces had already occurred after eleven years of marriage. The reduction in the mean duration of marriage at divorce is another indicator of the growing concentration of the divorce risk in the early marriage durations.

Table D
Estimate⁽¹⁾ of the final proportion of marriages terminated by divorce in the 1960-1990 marriage cohorts

IMGIMGYear of marriage Divorces per 100 ma...IMGIMF

Mortality

Despite the slight increase in deaths in 2002, the life expectancy at birth of men seems to have continued to rise and has reached 75.6 years according to provisional data, whereas that of women remains at its 2001 level of 82.9 years (Table 11). The ﬁnal life table for 2001 conﬁrms the tendency to convergence in the male and female mean length of life: the difference between the two is only 7.4 years, after having peaked at 8.2 years in 1986-1988. Despite this convergence, France is still the country of western Europe where the gap is largest (Table 12). The mean length of life of French women in 2001 was the longest in the European Union, close behind that of Swiss women (83 years) who hold the record for Europe as a whole. In every country except Denmark and Ireland women can expect to live on average at least 80 years. Men live longest in Sweden (77.6 years). France, with a male life expectancy of 75.5 years, is in the middle; ﬁve countries havenot yet crossed the 75-year threshold: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Portugal.

Infant mortality fell hardly at all in 2000 and 2001, but the provisional data for 2002 show a slight decrease, which remains to be conﬁrmed (Table 11). Since 1995, when the infant mortality rate fell below ﬁve deaths under one year per 1,000 newborn (less than one death per 200 newborn), progress has been slower, and it seems difﬁcult in France to go below four deaths per 1,000 newborn. Four European countries have none the less achieved this: Finland, Sweden, Norway, and more recently, Spain (Table 13).

Improvements vary by age and sex

Let us observe the advances made at each age for each sex since the beginning of the 1990s. To minimize random variations, which can be large at ages when the risk of dying is very low, we used INSEE’s multi-annual life tables and calculated the ratio of the probabilities of dying at each age in or around 2000 to those observed at the same ages ten years earlier (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Mortality decline at each age between 1990 and 2000 (ratio of age-specific probabilities)

IMGIMGMortality decline at each age between 1990 and 200...IMGIMF

Children under ten have beneﬁted most from the decline in mortality over the last decade, and the advances achieved at those ages (a reduction of about one-third) were very similar for both sexes. But because the risks of dying are already so low at those ages, the gains in life expectancy at birth have been slight: a little over four months for men, a little over three months for women, which corresponds to only 13-14% of total gains for the years 1990-2000.

Between ages 15 and 65, improvements have been consistently smaller for women than for men, which explains the convergence of male and female life expectancies at birth. The gap, however, has narrowed by only 0.7 years, because after age 67, female mortality decreases more than male mortality. For women, therefore, the advances made at these ages are mainly responsible for the life expectancy gains achieved over the last ten years, whereas for men, the decline in mortality before 65 contributes much more. Of a total gain of 1.9 years for women between 1990 and 2000, 59% is due to the decline in mortality after 65, while among men, 51% of the gain of 2.5 years is due to advances made between 15 and 65.

Thanks to this trend more favourable to men between ages 15 and 65, excess male mortality has decreased slightly at the ages when it was highest (Figure 8). Between ages 20 and 25, for example, men’s risk of dying is now “only” three times that of women, compared with 3.5 times in 1990 [19]. Another excess mortality peak was observed around age 60: this has now been pushed back to 65 and its level is also tending to decrease, since the ratio of the probabilities is only 2.5. Excess male mortality has also considerably declined at ages 30-45, and especially around 35-40.

Figure 8

Excess male mortality at each age, c.1990 and c.2000 (ratio of male probability to female probability)

IMGIMGExcess male mortality at each age, c.1990 and c.20...IMGIMF

Sources: INSEE, life tables for 1989-1991 and 1999-2001.

Different causes at different ages

The trends in the main causes of death at those ages explain the convergence of male and female life expectancies. Between ages 15 and 60, trafﬁc accidents, suicides and cancers are in turn the leading cause of death, and at one point AIDS was in ﬁrst place for men aged 30-40. The trend for three of these factors was fairly favourable for at least part of the decade:

the downward tendency in mortality due to accidents has contributed greatly to the reduction in male mortality between ages 20 and 25 [20];
in the second half of the 1990s, the development of new therapies for AIDS, which by then had emerged as the leading cause of death for men between 30 and 40, is mainly responsible for reducing excess male mortality at those ages; the decrease in suicide over the same period also contributed;
from age 30 for women and age 40 for men, the main cause of death is cancer: the decline here is much less marked, especially among women, for whom certain types of cancers are resisting decline and in some cases are actually increasing. This is the case in particular for smoking- and alcohol-related cancers.

A recent INSERM study (Péquignot et al., 2003) shows a clear increase in lung cancer mortality and a rise — as yet modest — in cancers of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts among women, even as these two sites are experiencing a generally favourable trend among men (Table E).

Table E
“Avoidable” mortality before age 65 related to risk behaviours, in 1989 and 1999

IMGIMGStandardized mortality rate per 100,...IMGIMF

This study examined trends in mortality before age 65 that is termed “avoidable” because it is related to risk behaviours [21]. Despite the slightly stronger decline in avoidable mortality among men, their excess mortality remains high, in particular for smoking- and alcohol-related cancers. By calculating identical indicators for all the countries of the European Union, the study’s authors were able to show that around 1995, France had the highest rate of avoidable mortality among men under age 65, and that the position of women was little better, since only women in Denmark and Luxembourg were ranked below them.

The prospects for improving France’s position in this classiﬁcation are not good, especially for women, since the effects of smoking will continue to increase. In addition, further reduction in AIDS-related mortality seems difﬁcult to achieve, while at the same time the number of cases diagnosed each year has ceased to fall and the disease, which originally affected mostly men (roughly ﬁve times more men than women in the early 1990s), is now affecting women more than previously: of the cases diagnosed in 2001, there were 2.8 men for one woman. The majority of new cases are persons infected during heterosexual intercourse and who were not aware of being HIV-positive before the AIDS diagnosis was made (INVS, 2003).

The likelihood is therefore that life expectancies at birth of men and women will continue to converge, and that France will cease to occupy ﬁrst place in the European Union for female longevity.

The Statistical Data

Table 1
Population change (in thousands) and crude rates (per 1,000)^a

IMGIMGYear Mid-year population Live births...IMGIMF

Table 2
Age distribution of the population of metropolitan France on 1 January (%)

IMGIMGAge group 1985 1990 1995 1996 1997 1...IMGIMF

Table 3
Legal long-term immigration by registration status

IMGIMGYear admitted for residence 1994 199...IMGIMF

Table 4
Fertility since 1970

IMGIMGSum of rates for individual years of...IMGIMF

Table 5
Cohort fertility: cumulative fertility to selected ages, estimated completed fertility (mean number of children per 100 women), and mean age of childbearing (in years and tenths of years)

IMGIMGBirth cohort Cumulative fertility pe...IMGIMF

Table6
Total fertility rates for western Europe (average number of children per woman)

IMGIMG1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1...IMGIMF

Table 7
Cohort fertility in Western Europe

IMGIMGEstimated completed fertility (per w...IMGIMF

Table 8
Number of abortions and annual indices since 1985

IMGIMGYear Absolute number of abortions Ab...IMGIMF

Table 9
Characteristics of nuptiality and divorce since 1985

IMGIMGYear Number of marriages Marriages l...IMGIMF

Table 10
Characteristics of nuptiality by birth cohort

IMGIMGMen Male birth cohort Proportion nev...IMGIMF

Table 11
Characteristics of overall mortality since 1985

IMGIMGYear Life expectancy (years) Mortali...IMGIMF

Table 12
Life expectancy at birth in Western Europe in 2001

IMGIMGLife expectancy at birth (years) Mal...IMGIMF

Table 13
Infant mortality in Western Europe (rate per 1,000 live births)

IMGIMG1980 1985 1990 1995 1996 1997 1998 1...IMGIMF

Table 14
Standardized death rates by sex and groups of causes of death

IMGIMGCause of death (1) Men 1990 1991 199...IMGIMF

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

· Beaumel C., Doisneau L., Vatan M., 2003, La situation démographique en 2001. Mouvement de la population (INSEE Résultats, Société No. 18), 44 p. + CD-ROM.

· Beaumel C., Kerjosse R., Toulemon L., 1999, “Des mariages, des couples et des enfants”, INSEE Première, No. 624.

· Brutel C., Omalek L., 2003, Projections démographiques pour la France, ses régions et ses départements (horizon 2030/2050) (INSEE Résultats, Société No. 16), 40 p. + CD-ROM.

· Council of Europe, 2002, Recent Demographic Developments in Europe, 2002, Council of Europe Publishing, 120 p. + CD-ROM.

· Doisneau L., 2003, “Bilan démographique 2002. Légère diminution des naissances”, INSEE Première, No. 882.

· Eurostat, 2003, “Premiers résultats de la collecte de données démographiques pour 2002 en Europe”, Statistiques en bref (Population et conditions sociales, Thème 3-20/2003).

· Festy P., 2001, “The ‘Civil Solidarity Pact’ (PACS) in France: an impossible evaluation”, Population et Sociétés, No. 369.

· INSEE, 2003, “Bilan démographique 2002”, Bulletin mensuel de statistique, No. 1, pp. 129-144.

· INVS (Institut de veille sanitaire), 2003, Surveillance du VIH/sida en France, (AIDS watch in France), half-yearly report No. 1, 23 p., http:// www. invs. sante. fr/ publications/ 2003/ vih_sida_n1/ rapport_vih_sida_n1. pdf

· Péquignot F., Le Toullec A., Bovet M., Jougla É., 2003, “La mortalité ‘évitable’ liée aux comportements à risque, une priorité de santé publique en France”, Bulletin épidémiologique hebdomadaire, No. 30-31, pp. 139-141.

· Prioux F., 2002, “Recent demographic developments in France”, Population-E, 57(4-5), pp. 689-728.

· Ruelland N., Tonnerre M., 2003, “Trois années d’application du pacte civil de solidarité”, Infostat Justice, No. 64.

· Thierry X., 2001, “Les entrées d’étrangers en France de 1994 à 1999”, Population, 56(3), pp. 426-450.

NOTES

[*]

Institut National d’Études Démographiques, Paris.Translated by Zoé Andreyev.

[1]

Tables 1 to 14 are in the appendix.

[2]

Recording of migration ﬂows is extremely uneven across Europe and some of the ﬁgures quoted are only estimates.

[3]

The author would like to thank Xavier Thierry (INED) for providing the statistical data and other elements necessary for this part of the report.

[4]

In the remainder of the text the term “permits” is used in connection with all aliens authorized to reside in France, even though minors included in this number are not required to possess a residence permit.

[5]

The European Economic Space comprises the EU member states, plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

[6]

In 2000 and in 2001, the provisional estimates of INSEE were respectively 778,900 and 774, 800 births, which is 4,100 and 3,900 more than the ﬁnal ﬁgures.

[7]

The author thanks Lionel Doisneau, of the INSEE Demographic Surveys and Studies Division, for providing the provisional age-speciﬁc fertility and nuptiality rates for 2002, as well as the ﬁnal data for 2001, prior to publication of Situation Démographique.

[8]

Until then, even though the birth registration form was modiﬁed in 1989, the only published statistics were of legitimate births classiﬁed by their order in the current marriage, because the recording of birth orders in the mother’s lifetime was unsatisfactory.

[9]

This overestimation arises from the classiﬁcation, among the ﬁrst births of the mother, of ﬁrst births from unions that have come after an earlier fertile union (or a birth out of wedlock). Many local administrations continue to ﬁll in the INSEE form using the Livret de famille (the “family book” in which vital events are recorded) although this is speciﬁc to each union.

[10]

The age- and order-speciﬁc fertility rates have been corrected on the basis of the distribution of fertility by birth order within each age group. To estimate this distribution in 1998, we projected the trends observed in the 1999 Study of Family History survey for the 1980-1998 period (smoothed percentages over 2 or 3 years); for the years 1999-2001, we projected the distribution obtained for 1998 in the same way as for vital statistics. We thus assume that the bias of these statistics has not increased in four years. There is in fact little reason to believe that the recording of birth order has deteriorated in recent years.

[11]

A projection based on trends observed during the last three years (2000-2002) shows lower fertility ﬁgures, since after the high increase of the year 2000, the pace of growth slowed considerably in 2001 and 2002.

[12]

In recent years, due to changes in the system of transmission of vital statistics registered in town halls, INSEE has experienced difﬁculty collecting complete records and has to make corrections, in particular as concerns marriages (INSEE, BMS n° 6-2003, p.6). In addition, the quality of the monthly vital statistics collected by the Villes (Cities) survey also seems to be deteriorating, since for several years the provisional ﬁgures given by INSEE in its end-of-year report largely exceed the ﬁnal published ﬁgures (especially for marriages).

[13]

Traditionally, marriages more often take place in the wife’s country or region of origin.

[14]

But separations and marriages must be subtracted from this number, which is why the stock of unmarried couples grows by much less than 450,000 per year.

[15]

The ﬁrst indicator relates the sum of age-speciﬁc ﬁrst marriage rates to the total population of the cohort concerned, irrespective of marital status. The sum could be interpreted directly as the cohort-speciﬁc ﬁrst marriage frequency, if the timing of nuptiality were invariable. But when age at marriage rises, the sum’s value may be markedly smaller than the cohort-speciﬁc intensity of nuptiality. For the second indicator, the age-speciﬁc probabilities are computed by relating ﬁrst marriage only to the persons at risk of marriage, i.e. the never-married. The overall probability summarizes the age-speciﬁc probabilities of marriage throughout life in a hypothetical cohort, yielding a mean number of marriages per person. While it is impossible to establish a simple relationship with a cohort’s ﬁrst marriage intensity, the variations of the second indicator can be read as a summary of the changing risk of marriage for the never-married.

[16]

Stability in the mean probabilities of marriage for the 1998-2002 period.

[17]

This term is used for the sake of convenience, because the “divorce probabilities” that we have computed do not take into account widowhood and migration: strictly speaking, widows and widowers and persons emigrating abroad should be excluded from the number of persons at risk of divorcing; on the other hand, persons who have married abroad should be included. The higher the duration of marriage, the more the probabilities of divorce are underestimated.

[18]

The recent rise in the divorce probability during the ﬁrst ﬁve years of marriage could be a statistical artifact produced by a slight underestimation of marriages since 1997.

[19]

It is true that this excess mortality involves probabilities which are still quite low at these ages: in 2000, between ages 20 and 25, the probability of dying reached 5.4 per 1,000 for men and 1.8 per 1,000 for women. Towards 1990, these probabilities stood at respectively 7.7 per 1,000 and 2.3 per 1,000.

[20]

Little progress, however, has been made in the second half of the decade, and we must wait for the statistics of 2002-2003 to see the impact of new road safety laws.

[21]

The causes of death selected in this article correspond to the recommendations of the High Committee for Public Health.