History of male fertility in France during the XX century

Fabienne Daguet, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE)

This paper presents the trends of male fertility in France during the XXth century, calculated from the censuses and vital statistics. The main difficulty consists of the lack of information on out-of-wedlock fathers. As a consequence, some assumptions have been made. Significant differences between male and female fertility are connected to differences of total number of population of each sex at the reproductive ages and to a distinct timing. The male total fertility rate was generally higher than female’s before 1955. It became lower about 1960 and comparable after 1967. The age difference between both parents have decreased during the XXth century, going down from 5 to 3 years. Men are very often older than their spouse, so that trends affecting fertility appear a few years later in male than in female cohorts.