On 1 January 1914, the population pyramid of France had a regular bell shape. It was then dented by military losses and a shortfall of births during the First World War. Today, the French population pyramid is returning to a more regular shape, and the century-long scars of WWI have practically...

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....

La fréquence des avortements volontaires a baissé dans le monde au cours des années 1990, passant de 35 avortements pour 1 000 femmes en âge de procréer (ayant entre 15 et 44 ans) en 1995 à 29 ‰ en 2003. Mais elle s'est stabilisée dans les années 2000 (28 ‰ en 2008), parce que la...

The value placed on slimness varies between countries, and may be greater for one or other sex. Four groups of countries emerge: a set of mainly European countries, including France, where slimness is more highly valued for women than for men; countries such as Uruguay where the preference is...

La valorisation de la minceur est plus ou moins forte selon les pays, et peut s'imposer davantage à l'un ou l'autre sexe. On peut distinguer quatre groupes de pays : ceux majoritairement européens telle la France, où la pression de la minceur est plus forte sur les femmes que sur les hommes....

Our ideas about population have varied continuously over the centuries, as illustrated in the vocabulary changes detected by Ngram Viewer in the vast corpus of books digitized by Google. For example, the French word démographie, first coined in 1855, did not take off until after the Great War,...

Nos idées sur la population n'ont cessé de varier au fil des siècles. En témoigne l'évolution du vocabulaire des ouvrages numérisés en masse par Google, qu'on peut désormais sonder avec Ngram Viewer. Ainsi, « démographie », créé en 1855, ne prend son essor qu'après la Grande...

The twinning rate has increased dramatically over the last four decades in developed countries. Two main factors drive this increase: delayed childbearing, as older women tend to have twins more frequently, and the expansion of assisted reproductive technology (ART), which carries an increased...

A number of studies have been published on the deep-seated changes occurring in Algerian families. Fertility is falling, marriages are happening later in life, the Ayla kinship unit has changed and the traditional family has been replaced by the contemporary family, home to a clash between...

Longtemps en Afrique de l’Ouest, on a souligné le maintien d’une fécondité élevée et d’unions précoces, caractéristiques explicites de relations de genre inégalitaires (grand écart d’âges entre époux, précocité de la fécondité de femmes presque exclusivement vouées à la...