Publications by PSE researchers

Water management depends on both the physical and social structures of large cities. In Paris, these elements interacted to limit and constrain access to water for large segments of the population for long periods of time. The very unequal distribution of property in the city is central to understanding water regimes in Paris and their evolution over time. This article analyzes the evolution of water systems in Paris from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, considering access to water (and its quality) as well as the provision of sewers to remove waste soiled materials. Important social variations in the modalities of access to water within the city persisted for a long time. They were a consequence of choices made in organizing the distribution of water in the city.

Each year, around 100,000 people acquire French nationality, most often based on their family situation (marriage, birth and childhood in France, being parents of French children, etc.). These acquisitions of nationality are also linked to historical and geopolitical transformations. Since the early 1960s, more than 200,000 individuals who lost their French nationality, in many cases when colonized territories became independent, have been reintegrated. The history of reintegration, a discreet and little-known procedure, sheds light on some of the ‘nationality trouble’ of the post-colonial era.

Paris came under siege twice between September 1870 and May 1871, first by the Prussian army and then by the Versailles government’s assault on the Commune. The first resulted in a severe famine; the second in a bloodbath. We investigate the impact of this crisis on child mortality, adult height, and adult mortality, using original vital records and military register data from one of the city’s lowest-income areas. Deaths more than doubled at all ages during this period, and under-5 mortality rates increased by 30% for children born in 1869 and 1870. Those conceived and gestated during the crisis ended up significantly shorter and faced 40% higher adult mortality than unaffected cohorts born afterwards, but children aged 2–5 later recovered in height as living conditions quickly improved. A nutritional shock’s translation into short-term variations in stature and into lifetime survival thus seems to depend not only on the shock’s duration but also on preceding and subsequent living conditions, which themselves interact with selection effects and critical age windows for physiological growth.

Following the Age of Revolution (Osterhammel, 2014), Paris witnessed two wars at the end of the 19th century. First, in September 1870, the Prussian army besieged the French capital, and then, beginning in March 1871, so did the French government. Both sieges were waged on people perceived to be socially and politically dangerous.

At the end of the Second World War, many Algerians came to live in France, taking advantage of strong labour market demand but also (from 1946) of their newly acquired freedom of movement as citizens of the French Union. This migration worried the French authorities, who introduced a series of targeted and often discriminatory measures. One such measure was the identification of these populations in the census, the main source of statistical data on the population of France. In derogation of the law and the egalitarian principles applied in metropolitan France, INSEE applied in 1954 and 1962 a name-based method to identify Algerians present in France, who were widely categorized as ‘French Muslims of Algeria’ despite having a legal status identical to that of French natives. Statistics were thus compiled based on ethnicity and religion, unlike today’s standard census-taking practices.

This paper examines intergenerational wealth mobility between fathers and children in France between 1848 and 1960. Considering wealth mobility in the long run requires taking into account not only positional mobility (that is, how families move within a given distribution of wealth), but also structural mobility induced by changes in the distribution of wealth. Such changes are related to two structural phenomena: in the nineteenth century, the rising number of individuals leaving no estate at death and, after World War I, the decline in the number of the very rich who could live off their wealth. The paper studies the movements between these groups and estimates the intergenerational elasticity of wealth, taking into account the persistence at the bottom and at the top.

The Colonial Transplant in the French Metropole. “French Muslims from Algeria” in the 1954 Census From 1947 to 1962, the specific status of French Indigenous Muslims from colonial Algeria changed tremendously, getting closer to that of “French from Algeria”. This is particularly the case for Algerian residing in the French metropole who were, in theory at least, deemed French like anyone else. However, in practice, colonial migrants from Algeria living in France worried the French administration and endured a specific-discriminatory-treatment. In particular, although it was illegal, they were specifically identified in administrative documents, referred to as “French Muslims from Algeria”. This paper mobilizes the 1954 Census to look at the ways Algerian living in France were identified. It argues that the colonial context influenced the design and implementation of the census, leading the Metropolitan administrative officials to breach their usual identification practices

It is common to argue that water infrastructure innovations improve life expectancy. Yet the benefits of clean water depend on a mechanism to dispose of waste water. We draw on the historical experience of a large industrial city to estimate the impact of the spread of the sewer system. Using a longitudinal data set on mortality and rents for each of Paris’ 80 neighborhoods we show that sanitation contributed several years to life expectancy. These results point out the multiplicity of infrastructure needed to help decrease mortality.

La façon dont sont vécus, organisés et préparés (ou pas) les derniers jours de l’existence offre, au-delà de la question de la vieillesse, un aperçu du fonctionnement des sociétés, notamment des rapports sociaux qui les organisent et des institutions qui les structurent. De fait, elle renvoie à une série de questions qui touchent l’ensemble des sciences sociales sur les relations à l’intérieur de la famille (Oris, Dubert et Viret, 2014), les tensions entre autonomie individuelle et soutien collectif ou encore les inégalités devant la mort (Bourdieu et Kesztenbaum, 2007). Dans une perspective de démographie historique, ce volume ne fera qu’effleurer ces questions pour évoquer plus directement les transformations de la fin de vie au cours du temps, essentiellement ces deux ou trois derniers siècles : les maladies dont ont souffert les personnes âgées ; l’évolution des pathologies sur le moyen et le long terme ; la médicalisation de la vie et notamment de ses derniers moments ; sa marchandisation également ; la perception de la mort et la façon de s’y confronter.

From September 1870 to February 1871, the Prussian army’s siege of Paris resulted in a harsh famine. Using original data from vital records and military registers, we investigate the impact of the siege in terms of both mortality and the height stature of survivors in one of the poorest areas of the city. We first estimate that deaths more than doubled at all ages during the 6-month siege and that child mortality rates increased by more than 25% (10 percentage points) for children born in 1869 or 1870. Second, we find little impact of famine on the height of individuals less than 5 years old during the siege, but a rather large deficit exists at ages 6 to 10. After having examined selection effects linked to mortality, fertility and migration, we argue that the siege was short-lived enough that many early-age survivors were able to catch up in stature.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, industrialized countries saw their urban mortality fall and the end to the rural-urban mortality differentials, once vastly favourable to rural areas. This process can be linked with two broad phenomena: a rise in income and improved sanitation. Here we focus on income and take advantage of the unusual quantity, quality, and variety of statistics computed by the statistical department of the Paris municipality from 1880 to 1914. The difference between the best and worst neighbourhoods (quartiers) in Paris in life expectancy is over 10 years in life expectancy. To explain such huge mortality differentials between neighbourhoods, we add information on income and wealth from fiscal records, the distribution on rental values for each neighbourhood. We document that the disparities in mortality between neighbourhoods were strongly related these income indicators. Over time, mortality fell partly because income increases and partly because of a change of the mortality income relationship.

After 1850, mortality began its long-term fall in most industrialized countries, a process that has been linked to rising incomes and improved water infrastructure. The problem, however, is that these contribution are jointly determined and feedback into each other. Here we estimate their impact using a longitudinal data set on mortality and income for each of Paris' 80 neighborhoods. Income and sanitation both contributed to the decrease in mortality, a standard deviation increase in either variable produces a two years gain in life expectancy. These results give insights on the determinants of the health transition but also on the long-term evolution of health inequality.