Family Demography and Family Law

Over the last decades, family structure and family dynamics have undergone tremendous changes. In family demography, these changes are typically interpreted as the consequences of deep transformations in values, attitudes and norms. These are defined and measured at the level of the individual, typically using a questionnaire, and, when aggregated, they are usually interpreted either as characteristics of a population – for instance in cross-national comparisons – or as characteristics of different groups within a country, say men and women, the less educated and the well-educated, and so on.

The relationship between the changes in the demography of the family and the changes in family law is not a simple matter of cause and effect. Changes in law occur as a consequence of changes in behaviour as much as changes in law may favour changes in behaviour. The purpose of the Panel would be to foster the study of the connection between changes in family law and changes in family structure and family dynamics while assuming as little as possible about the specifics of the connection.

The Panel will promote the organisation of sessions on the connection between family demography and family law in population conferences, notably the IUSSP 2021 International Population Conference but also, and before that, the annual or biannual meetings of large-scale national or international population associations such as the Population Association of America (PAA), the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS), the Asociación Latinoamericana de Población (ALAP) and the Association internationale des démographes de langue française (AIDELF).

The panel will also seek to organise at least one joint activity with a scientific legal association such as the International Society of Family Law (ISFL). The ISFL has already shown interest in collaboration with sociologists and demographers in its regular meetings.

The Panel also plans to organize two seminars and the publication of a selection of papers presented in these seminars, preferably in an open-access book or journal available to all interested potential readers regardless of their institutional affiliation and means.