Abstract: Geographic variation in extreme longevity remains poorly understood, largely due to the scarcity of methodologically rigorous, fine-grained analyses at the national scale. We address this question in part using French civil registration records for the 1904–1913 birth cohorts. By applying the extinct cohort method, which derives survival estimates from death records alone, we avoid reliance on census data, a source of systematic bias in analyses of extreme longevity.  We compute sex-specific Extreme Longevity Index (ELI) across 87 regions and 1,681 functional territorial units and show that the probability of surviving from birth to age 100 varies more than twofold across regions for women (from 0.89% to 2.32%) and fourfold for men (from 0.12% to 0.47%), with a geographically coherent and temporally stable pattern common to both sexes. Spatial cluster analysis further reveals twelve longevity zones whose boundaries are robust across multiple spatial weight specifications, including six high- and six low-longevity zones. Among the high-longevity zones, the Paris Area and the Low Loire Valley exhibit contrasting mortality patterns — consistent with heterogeneous frailty selection and a uniformly favourable environment, respectively — identifying the Low Loire Valley as the most compelling candidate for a genuine blue zone in metropolitan France.

Abstract: Global cities today combine economic, political, and cultural power with some of the highest levels of longevity worldwide. How these urban health advantages emerged, and whether they were shared across urban populations, remains poorly understood, as addressing this question requires a long-term and fine-grained historical perspective. We reconstruct continuous, sex-specific life tables for Paris and its 20 districts over 1881–2019, combining newly digitized historical sources with modern statistical modeling. We first challenge the notion of a city-wide “urban penalty”: by the late \nth{19} century, life expectancy at birth already exceeded the national average in several parts of the city. These differences were sharply structured by social geography: the five most affluent districts enjoyed life expectancy 11–12 years above that of the five least affluent, with disparities rooted overwhelmingly in early-life mortality. Paris thus appears as a deeply divided “longevity capital” at the end of the 19th century. Over the first half of the 20th century, within-city inequalities narrowed markedly, reaching a historical minimum. Since the 1970s, however, these gaps have widened again: by 2019, the difference in life expectancy at birth between the most and least advantaged districts reached five years among males and four years among females.

Abstract: While deaths of despair (DoD) have been extensively documented in the US, evidence for Europe remains scarce, particularly at the subnational level. Using cause-specific mortality data covering 170 regions from 23 countries and spanning the two decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, this study provides the first comprehensive subnational analysis of DoD mortality across Europe and benchmarks regional trends against the US. Our results reveal a 15% decline in the overall DoD burden across Europe. Yet this overall trend conceals deeply heterogeneous regional dynamics, with only two in three regions experiencing significant decreases. Three contiguous transnational clusters of stagnating or rising mortality emerged in the North-Western and Eastern parts of Europe, as well as in Sweden. At the end of the study period, a clear north–south gradient in DoD burden is evident, with levels in Scotland, Lithuania, and parts of Poland exceeding those observed in the US. Stratifying by age group and category of DoD reveals further concerning dynamics. Among the working-age population, steep increases in drug-related burden were observed in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Among the elderly, alcohol emerged as the dominant driver: rising mortality from acute alcohol-related causes affected one in two European regions, and from liver diseases one in three, with overall burden levels exceeding the US benchmark in half of all regions. These findings demonstrate that Europe is not immune to the forces driving deaths of despair and call for renewed subnational monitoring and regionally tailored public health responses.

Abstract: Recent research has shown that geography is an important predictor of life expectancy at birth (e0). However, most papers have focused on place of residence at death (PoR), yet place of birth (PoB) may be a more important predictor of later mortality. To study how different measures of geography matter, we compute the first annual full lifetables by PoB for 90 French regions between 1975 and 2019 and compare them with lifetables by PoR. We show that e0 by PoR and PoB are highly correlated, but they have diverged in recent times, particularly for men, consistent with the growing importance of migration. This divergence has consequences on the trends in geographic disparities of longevity.  First, geographic disparities by PoB have continuously declined, but measured by PoR they have risen since the 1990s. Second, the French geographical income gradient - the association between regional income and e0 - was negative and became positive in the 1990s when measured by PoR. When measured by PoB, the gradient has never been positive: it was negative but is now insignificant. These results are qualitatively similar if we study life expectancy at age 50.

Abstract: This paper proposes homogeneous annual series on the income distribution of French metropolitan départements for the period 1960-69 and 1986-2018. We rely on unpublished and newly digitised archives of the French Ministry of Finance. They consist of fiscal tabulations that are a summary of households’ income tax declarations. Based on these raw sources, we interpolate the whole income distribution of French metropolitan départements after 1986. Before 1986, we need more assumptions as only households liable to French income tax filed income tax declarations at that time. We propose a methodology to estimate the number and average income of non-taxable households before 1986 that also allows us to reconstruct the income distribution of French metropolitan départements for the period 1960-69.