In Memory of Patrick Festy

1 Patrick Festy, an INED researcher and Director of the Institute from 1995 to 1998, passed away on 7 December 2022.

2 Holder of a State Doctorate awarded in 1978 for his thesis on fertility in Western countries, Festy was author or co-author of some 15 books and more than 250 publications on a wide range of topics including fertility, marriage, family, ageing, mortality, and demographic trends. His work focused on populations in France, Europe, and elsewhere in the world, Morocco especially.

3 Not only did Festy contribute around 20 articles to Population as an author, along with four reports on demographic developments in France, but he will be remembered above all for his work as the journal’s editor-in-chief from 1989 (starting with the first volume of 1990) until 1995. [1] Over this period, he assumed responsibility for the reports to parliament on the French population published annually in Population. He also oversaw numerous special thematic issues, including three that paid tribute to the illustrious demographers Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, Roland Pressat, and Alfred Sauvy, two of whom were former directors of INED.

4 During his term as editor-in-chief, Festy helped to establish Population as a journal fully independent of its host institution and met the standards of the international scientific community. The range of contributors became progressively more diverse and international, as Jean-Paul Sardon points out in his introduction to the feature devoted to the journal’s 50th anniversary in 1995. The growing number of published articles, and of methodological and explanatory papers, highlighted by Etienne Van de Walle in that same issue, also bear witness to the journal’s dynamic expansion.

5 Patrick Festy did much to shape the success of Population, and for the last 30 years, its successive editors and editorial committees have sought to pursue and develop his legacy.

New Submission Rules for the Early-Career Researcher Prize

6 Since 2015, Population has awarded a prize to honour the work of a student or early-career researcher. This competition is highly successful and enhances the journal’s international visibility. For the 2023 edition, 20 papers were submitted, 12 were preselected and assessed by an international jury, but none of them were considered ready enough to be accepted in their current form and published directly, as required by the competition rules (see ‘A Word from the President of the Jury’ [2]). Some may well be published after revision and resubmission. In scientific publishing, very few articles are accepted with only minor revisions at their first submission, even those written by the most experienced researchers; and most authors take several months to rework their paper.

7 In agreement with the Editorial Board and to improve the candidates’ chances of success, we have simplified the competition rules for the prize. [3] From now on, all early-career authors who submit a paper to Population are potentially entitled to compete, provided they comply with the eligibility criteria, which remain unchanged. The Board will assess these papers via the regular review process. An international jury, renewed each year, will examine the versions accepted by the Board over the 12 past months. We hope this new approach will highlight the major contribution of early-career authors to our journal and ensure that a prizewinner is selected each year.

A New Feature: Data Papers

8 In 2022, Population became an open science journal. For several years, the journal published one article with immediate free access per issue (along with the annual chronicles and demographic reports). Today, its entire content is available free of charge from the date of issue, in both English and French, via the Cairn platform.

9 Consistent with INED’s open data sharing policy and to ensure the reproducibility and transparency of its published content, Population encourages authors to provide access to the sources, data, and computer codes used in their research. To this end, Population now includes a new category of papers on research sources and data, commonly known as ‘data papers’. [4] These papers present original sources and data in the field of population studies. They serve the objectives of open science by documenting data to promote transparency, scientific integrity, data reuse, reproducibility, and sharing. Like all the articles and research notes in Population, these data papers are peer-reviewed and must meet the journal’s quality standards. The data they present may be varied: surveys, administrative databases, contextual databases, sources grouped for comparative purposes, etc. Of limited length, these papers must include the information needed to present and analyse the data they describe: context, ethical issues and procedures, scope of the study population, nature, potential and limitations, and conditions for accessing the data and associated documentation.

10 We are pleased to publish Population’s first data paper in this issue. It presents the data obtained in the second edition of the Trajectories and Origins survey (TeO2), a general interest survey on migration and the integration of immigrants and their descendants in France. We hope this inaugural article will be of interest to readers and will encourage other authors to contribute to this new feature.

Research Articles in This Issue

11 This issue contains four research articles and four book reviews. The first two articles adopt a historical approach to the measurement of behaviours, examining social norms of birth control in the first case and of partnerships in the second.

12 In ‘“We’re Just Careful”: How Surveys Have Measured Use of the Withdrawal Method in France Since the 1970s’, Cécile Thomé looks at how the practice of withdrawal has been measured in France since the legalization of contraception. While withdrawal may have played a key role in historical fertility decline, the article shows how this practice has been abandoned as a primary method of contraception in favour of so-called modern practices, though without disappearing entirely. In her methodological analysis, she seeks to measure this difficult-to-define and difficult-to-report practice, using survey data to capture the diversity of behaviours and the ways they are combined by couples wishing to control their fertility.

13 In the second article, ‘Living Apart Together: 40 Years of Sociodemographic Research on LAT Relationships’, Christophe Giraud adopts a similar methodological approach to study the emergence and recognition of the social phenomenon of living apart together (LAT). The way LAT relationships are identified in surveys reveals the diverse ways they have been defined, thus raising the fundamental question of what constitutes a couple or a union.

14 Alix Sponton’s ‘Reluctant Fathers? A Mixed-Methods Approach to Grasp the Diversity of Paternity Leave Non-Take-Up’ focuses on the minority of fathers who do not take their paternity leave (11 days at the time of the study). Her detailed analysis of two national surveys and a series of qualitative interviews adds nuance to the widespread assumption that non-take-up of leave reflects a reaffirmation of gendered educational norms. She shows that new fathers still face employment-related, administrative, and informational obstacles. Beyond the example of paternity leave, her analysis makes an important contribution to the study of non-take-up of welfare rights.

15 The final article, ‘Children Who Have Never Gone to School: How Regional Heterogeneity Shapes Access to Primary Education in Uganda’, examines measures of progress in primary education. Drawing on a sample of the population census, Christian Kakuba and Valérie Golaz show how indicators estimated at the national level may conceal major regional disparities, notably gender inequalities. They illustrate the need for detailed and disaggregated measures, spatial measures especially.