ABSTRACT
The first French statistics enabling fertility to be measured accurately date from 1891, and estimates have been possible for as far back as 1800. All these data show that fertility in France had begun to decline before the end of the eighteenth century. For fertility, the ratio of births per year to the number of women aged from 15 to 45 is quite sufficient for the problem we are concerned with: this is the general fertility rate. For France, the general fertility rate, when divided by 0•0695, differs very little from the gross reproduction rate. Every war produces modifications in the sex-ratio of the age-groups. The shaded area represents the difference between normal and actual sex ratios. Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases account for the major part of this excess male mortality. This stability of the mortality of men over 35 throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth is one of the most curious facts of demography.
