Family History Study
EHF
EHF
The 1999 survey was the occasion for a major renovation, inspired in large part by the work of Ined (Institut national d'études démographiques) on family situations and histories.
During the March 1999 population census, 380,000 men and women living in ordinary homes completed a supplementary bulletin on their"family history", including questions on their origins, their children, their periods of life as a couple and their social background, as well as on the languages used within their national and regional families; the same information was collected from 6,600 people living in community, including 1,700 male prisoners.
The demographic questionnaire of this 1999 edition of the Family Survey, the first to also address men, has been profoundly renovated and will allow for numerous studies covering family histories in all their complexity. The exploitation of complementary questions on languages and speakers will also provide much awaited information on the linguistic diversity of our country and the dynamics of national integration throughout this century.
Demographic information in France comes from two main sources. The census provides data on the state of the population at a given date; civil status provides information on population movements (births, marriages, deaths). But these two sources are too summary to shed light on the behaviour of the actors (number of children, calendar of births, types of union, remarriage, etc.): the main objective of the census is to provide localized information, on a very fine geographical scale, in particular to propose the size of the legal population of each commune, authenticated by a decree; the primary function of civil status is to define the identity of persons.
Associated with the population census since 1954, which makes it one of INSEE's oldest sample surveys, the Family survey completes the system. Its primary objective is to monitor the development of new family forms through a retrospective biographical questionnaire reconstructing the demographic history of the generations. In addition, each edition of this survey devotes a series of questions to a particular theme related to current concerns, such as female employment in 1982 or early childhood care in 1990. For 1999, the transmission of languages and speakers from one generation to the next was chosen.
Survey
Punctual or aperiodic