The rise of the small household: demographic change and household structure in Paris

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines the changing numbers and structure of households in the City of Paris during the 1980s and 1990s. It sets the findings in the context of the Paris agglomeration and considers the results in the light of broader demographic trends associated with the second demographic transition. Although part of a longer‐term historical process of declining household size, the growth of one‐person households was rapid in this period, accounting for most of the growth in numbers of households. Over 50% of all households were one‐person in 1999 in the City of Paris, and four‐fifths consisted of just one or two people. The greatest increase was in the pre‐retirement age groups. The paper examines the demographic structure of these households and their geographical distribution, raising questions about the relationship between household changes, occupational structure, housing markets and patterns of residential mobility. Whilst the analysis confirms the well‐established concentration of one‐person households in the central city, it indicates considerable dispersion of new household forms to the rest of the agglomeration. Moreover, although young adults continue to play an important role in the City of Paris, the effects of previous demographic change on the size of generations points to a sharp increase in older adults in their forties and fifties during the 1990s. As in other leading French cities, gender, occupational status and housing are found to be important ingredients in the explanation of one‐person households, with the increase in women in professional employment a particular feature. A case study of one quartier exemplifies these relationships. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.