Family arrangements in France: toward which trends for the near future?

Eva Beaujouan, Centre for Population Change (CPC)
Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Using the continuous multi-state tool elaborated within the European Project MicMac (http://www.nidi.knaw.nl/en/micmac/), we address three questions in this paper. First, how will the family situations change in the near future in France? More precisely, will the proportion of people living as a couple go on decreasing ? Will the share of unmarried couples and births out of marriage stabilize ? Second, taking a micro-perspective will allow us to describe the proportion of people experiencing different transitions, the mean ages at beginning and ending of different episodes, as well as their mean duration. The third aim of the paper is to check the robustness of MicMac estimates, based on age-specific transition rates, through a comparison with duration-specific life table estimates, taking the example of lone parenthood. Data come from a large one-percent survey which took place within the last census in France, and includes a set of questions on family history.