Family formation and urbanization

Although migration is almost always attributed to economic causes, in fact its demographic motives are often important. Migration influences both an individual’s future marriage and family patterns – people leave home more readily when they are single, and are more ready to produce children in societies in which fertility is high.
It is difficult to study the interactions between these life events without detailed data, and this is why Daniel Courgeau [*] has organized a survey to collect data on occupational, family and migration histories.
Using an original method which he has outlined in an earlier article [**], he demonstrates here how migration affects behaviour patterns and how certain behaviour patterns may induce migration.