Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Demography 403
155. The Office of Population Research of Princeton University has under-
taken a study, by small administrative districts, of the population trend in the
various European countries during the nineteenth century. The object of the
study is to show where and how the decline in the fertility rate in this part of
the world began.
Mention should also be made of the studies being carried out at the Univer-
sity of California (Berkeley), while at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadel-
phia) work is in progress on a history of world population.
156. The specialized research team recently formed in France has just begun
its work. The research programme covers the following six points:
It is proposed to extend to 1866 the nominal record of the population of 40
villages already studied for the period 1670 to 1829 in the research mentioned
above. A study of the causes of death at the end of the eighteenth and beginning
of the nineteenth centuries wil be undertaken with the aid of various medical
and statistical documents. A reconstitution is to be effected of families formed
in the eighteenth century in Rouen and about a hundred neighbouring parishes.
An examination of Catholic registers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries is expected to provide methodological information for a more general
study of the same kind. The geographical distribution of the French population
from 1600 to the present time wil be determined through the use, in particular,
of tax rolls. This piece of research wil lead to the publication of departmental
dictionaries in which the administrative history of each department (administra-
tive sub-division ofFrance) wil be found. Lastly, an anthropological study of the
French male population in the nineteenth century is to be undertaken, based on
documents concerning recruitment for military service. All the foregoing
studies are already under way.
157. In connexion with these researches, France is continuing the publication
of forgotten works of the past relating to demography. In 1967, an annotated
edition of the works of Boisguilbert was published. This important French
official belonging to the reign of Louis XN expressed during his life-time some
very shrewd ideas about the links between economic and social development and
population trends which, considering the time when they were put forward,
seem astonishingly up to date.
A French edition of the works of the German demographer Siissmilch, who
published in 1741 his masterpiece Die Cottliche Ordnung, is in preparation. It
should be noted that Shssmilch’s works are not to be found anywhere except
in the big national libraries.
158. Similarly, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population
is preparing for publication a work by the Dutch demographer Kerseboom - a
pioneer in the establishment of mortality tables.
159. We may also mention the forthcoming publication in France of a study of
demographic ideas in the nineteenth century, as seen through French literature.