Classic social science foundational study by Andre-Michel Guerry on crime, suicide, literacy and other “moral statistics” in 1830s France. Data from the R package Guerry (Michael Friendly and Stephane Dray). See below for detailed sources.
- Observations = 85
- Variables = 23
- Years = 1815-1834
Data overview
| Variable | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| dept | Department ID: Standard numbers for the departments | |
| Region | Region of France (‘N’=’North’, ‘S’=’South’, ‘E’=’East’, ‘W’=’West’, ‘C’=’Central’). Corsica is coded as NA. | |
| Dprtmnt | Department name: Departments are named according to usage in 1830, but without accents. A factor with levels Ain Aisne Allier … Vosges Yonne | |
| Crm_prs | Population per Crime against persons. | Table A2 in Guerry (1833). Compte général, 1825-1830 |
| Crm_prp | Population per Crime against property. | Compte général, 1825-1830 |
| Litercy | Percent of military conscripts who can read and write. | Table A2 in Guerry (1833) |
| Donatns | Donations to the poor. | Table A2 in Guerry (1833). Bulletin des lois |
| Infants | Population per illegitimate birth. | Table A2 in Guerry (1833). Bureau des Longitudes, 1817-1821 |
| Suicids | Population per suicide. | Table A2 in Guerry (1833). Compte général, 1827-1830 |
| Maincty | Size of principal city (‘1:Sm’, ‘2:Med’, ‘3:Lg’), used as a surrogate for population density. Large refers to the top 10, small to the bottom 10; all the rest are classed Medium. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). An ordered factor with levels: 1:Sm < 2:Med < 3:Lg |
| Wealth | Per capita tax on personal property. A ranked index based on taxes on personal and movable property per inhabitant. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833) |
| Commerc | Commerce and Industry, measured by the rank of the number of patents / population. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833) |
| Clergy | Distribution of clergy, measured by the rank of the number of Catholic priests in active service population. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). Almanach officiel du clergy, 1829 |
| Crim_prn | Crimes against parents, measured by the rank of the ratio of crimes against parents to all crimes – Average for the years 1825-1830. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). Compte général |
| Infntcd | Infanticides per capita. A ranked ratio of number of infanticides to population – Average for the years 1825-1830. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). Compte général |
| Dntn_cl | Donations to the clergy. A ranked ratio of the number of bequests and donations inter vivios to population – Average for the years 1815-1824. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). Bull. des lois, ordunn. d’autorisation |
| Lottery | Per capita wager on Royal Lottery. Ranked ratio of the proceeds bet on the royal lottery to population — Average for the years 1822-1826. | Table A1 in Guerry (1833). Compte rendu par le ministre des finances |
| Desertn | Military desertion, ratio of number of young soldiers accused of desertion to the force of the military contingent, minus the deficit produced by the insufficiency of available billets – Average of the years 1825-1827. | A1. Compte du ministère du guerre, 1829 état V |
| Instrct | Instruction. Ranks recorded from Guerry’s map of Instruction. Note: this is inversely related to Literacy | |
| Prsttts | Number of prostitutes registered in Paris from 1816 to 1834, classified by the department of their birth | Parent-Duchatelet (1836),De la prostitution en Paris |
| Distanc | Distance to Paris (km). Distance of each department centroid to the centroid of the Seine (Paris) | Calculated from department centroids |
| Area | Area (1000 km^2). | Angeville (1836) |
| Pop1831 | Population in 1831, in 1000s | Taken from Angeville (1836),Essai sur la Statistique de la Population français |
Details
Note that most of the variables (e.g., Crime_pers) are scaled so that more is “better”.
Values for the quantitative variables displayed on Guerry’s maps were taken from Table A2 in the English translation of Guerry (1833) by Whitt and Reinking. Values for the ranked variables were taken from Table A1, with some corrections applied. The maximum is indicated by rank 1, and the minimum by rank 86.
Sources
Angeville, A. (1836). Essai sur la Statistique de la Population française Paris: F. Doufour.
Guerry, A.-M. (1833). Essai sur la statistique morale de la France Paris: Crochard. English translation: Hugh P. Whitt and Victor W. Reinking, Lewiston, N.Y. : Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
Parent-Duchatelet, A. (1836). De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 3rd ed, 1857, p. 32, 36
References
Dray, S. and Jombart, T. (2011). A Revisit Of Guerry’s Data: Introducing Spatial Constraints In Multivariate Analysis. The Annals of Applied Statistics, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2278-2299., DOI: 10.1214/10-AOAS356.
Brunsdon, C. and Dykes, J. (2007). Geographically weighted visualization: interactive graphics for scale-varying exploratory analysis. Geographical Information Science Research Conference (GISRUK 07), NUI Maynooth, Ireland, April, 2007.
Friendly, M. (2007). A.-M. Guerry’s Moral Statistics of France: Challenges for Multivariable Spatial Analysis. Statistical Science, 22, 368-399.
Friendly, M. (2007). Data from A.-M. Guerry, Essay on the Moral Statistics of France (1833).
See Also
The Guerry package for maps of France: gfrance and related data.
Prepared by Center for Spatial Data Science. Last updated July 3, 2017. Data provided “as is,” no warranties.