In an article published in Science in 2002, James Oeppen and James Vaupel, observing a constant linear progression (at arate of 3 months per year) in maximum life expectancies since 1841, concluded that the trend was set to continue for manyyears to come. A critical re-assessment of the data and...

Up until the 1970s, flu epidemics commonly caused 10,000 to 20,000 direct deaths each year in France, not counting those who died from complications of the disease. The development of an effective vaccine, regularly reformulated in response to new viral mutations, has brought a ten-fold...

Implementing a population policy implies that an optimal population size can be defined, based on the quantity of available resources and on the level of progress in production technologies. But these economic questions cannot be dissociated from the population age structure, trends in life...

After converging towards replacement level, fertility in the Maghreb is now following contrasting trends. In Tunisia, the total fertility rate (TFR) has levelled off and remained stable at 2.1 children perwoman since 1999. In Algeria, after dipping to 2.2 in the early 2000s, fertility has...

In France, only a minority of people wish to remain childless, and the proportion reporting this choice has remained stable for the last two decades. In statistical terms, reporting a wish to remain childless is more frequent among persons who are not in a union, among highly educated women and...

According to the 2005 ERFI survey, almost one in ten under-age children whose parents are separated never see their father. The younger the child at the time of parental separation, the less frequently he or she subsequently sees his father. The proportion of children who never see their father...

In 2008, the Maghreb totalled 76 million inhabitants, with 35 million in Algeria, 31 million in Morocco and 10 million in Tunisia. Although incomes and living conditions vary, population growth has followed a parallel downward trend in all three countries since the 1980s. Differences in...

Children born early in the year are more likely to get a place in collective daycare than those born inthe autumn. Places are allocated equally, however to boys and girls, and to children of biological oradoptive parents. Third children more frequently get a place in collective daycare than...

In the mid-eighteenth century, the population of France was four times larger than that of the United Kingdom (around 25 million versus 6 million). In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, population growth was much weaker in France than in the UK, and by 1918 the two populations were the...

The ÉPIC survey of individual and conjugal trajectories (Étude des parcours individuels et conjugaux, 2013-2014) confirms that many of the recent observed trends in conjugal behaviours are continuing, with some changes along the way. Fewer and fewer couples are opting for marriage, and age at...