Since 1971 the Swiss Federal Statistical Office has published annual fertility data split by nationality (Swiss/foreign). These indicate that the TFR for women of foreign nationality has been 0.5 children higher than for Swiss women for most of the period since 1991. However, statistics from...

The contraceptive practices of young women (aged 15-29) underwent two important evolutions during recent decades in France. First of all, beginning in the late 1960s, the use of the pill became general in this age group. However, its diffusion was not yet complete when the AIDS epidemic appeared...

Premarital sexual relations are becoming more common in Africa, a trend which is especially prevalent in urban settings. Although unmarried youth increasingly use condoms, many studies highlight considerable unmet contraceptive needs in this population subgroup. This article is based on...

Cross-country comparisons show that family policies supporting the work-family combination are related to higher fertility in industrialised countries. We argue that within each country, there is a dominant norm about the care of small children, linked to the shape of family policy, that...

Data on abortion in sub-Saharan Africa are rare and non-representative. This study presents a new method to collect quantitative data on clandestine abortion, the confidants method, applied in 2001 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Preliminary qualitative work showed that individuals are aware of...

The frequency of induced abortions fell worldwide in the 1990s, from 35 abortions per 1,000 womenof childbearing age (15-44 years) in 1995 to 29 per 1,000 in 2003. But it stabilized in the 2000s (28per 1,000 in 2008) as the spread of contraceptive use slowed down in developing countries....