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The New French Human Mortality Database

Florian Bonnet, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Data on mortality at the local level are scarce in France for the 20th century and debates concerning the territorial divide in France are deep. To bring a contribution to this issue, I compute the departmental lifetables since 1901, for both men and women. In this contribution, I present the raw data collected to do so, namely yearly births and deaths by age as well as population by age at each census carried out during the 20th century. I add statistics according to military mortality and mortality in deportation to cover the periods of the Two World Wars. I also present the methods I use to compute these lifetables, which come mainly from the Human Mortality Database protocol. I revise this protocol to consider the specificities of French departmental data, mainly the few changes in French departmental boundaries, the underestimation of infant mortality and the lack of raw data homogeneity. This new database complements a still limited supply of long-term mortality statistics computed at local level. These life tables are freely downloadable on a dedicated website called “French Regional Database” by anyone interested in mortality issues.

Keywords: Historical demography/methods, Mortality, Population geography

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session 169. Creating and Using International or Historical Datasets