Louis Henry (1911 – 1991) was a French historian. He was the founder of the
historical demography
Historical demography is the quantitative study of human population in the past. It is concerned with population size, with the three basic components of population change (fertility, mortality, and migration), and with population characteristi ...
and
one-place study One-place studies are a branch of family history and/or local history with a focus on the entire population of a single road, village or community, not just a single, geographically dispersed family line.
Introduction
In the course of a one-place s ...
fields. His 1956 book co-written with
Michel Fleury, ''Des registres paroissiaux à l'histoire de la population. Manuel de dépouillement et d'exploitation de l'état civil ancien'' laid the foundation for studies in those areas.
Henry proposed that it was possible to
reconstruct the population of France from 1670 to 1829. He devised more advanced methods and extracted data from records in order to correct bias and indicate which family histories could be used for different kinds of statistical analyses.
Henry is also responsible for the concept of
natural fertility Natural fertility is the fertility that exists without birth control. The control is the number of children birthed to the parents and is modified as the number of children reaches the maximum. There is evidence that little birth control is used in ...
, which guided the way demographers have come to understand the idea of fertility control.
References
*Paul-André Rosental
The Novelty of an Old Genre: Louis Henry and the Founding of Historical Demography Population (English edition), Volume 58 –2003/1
Further reading
*J. Dupâquier, ''Obituary: Louis Henry (1911-1991)'', Population Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Nov., 1992), pp. 539–540.
*Gerard Calot, ''Louis Henry (1911-1991)'', Population (French Edition), 47e Année, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1992), pp. i-ii.
*Henry, Louis (1961). “Some data on natural fertility,” ''Eugenics Quarterly'' 8: 81–91.
1911 births
1991 deaths
20th-century French historians
French male non-fiction writers
20th-century French male writers
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
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