Guerry "Moral Statistics" (1830s)

Source: R/guerry.R

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).

guerry

Format

An sf data frame with 85 rows, 23 variables, and a geometry column:

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.

Crm_prp

Population per Crime against property.

Litercy

Percent of military conscripts who can read and write.

Donatns

Donations to the poor.

Infants

Population per illegitimate birth.

Suicids

Population per suicide.

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.

Wealth

Per capita tax on personal property. A ranked index based on taxes on personal and movable property per inhabitant.

Commerc

Commerce and Industry, measured by the rank of the number of patents / population.

Clergy

Distribution of clergy, measured by the rank of the number of Catholic priests in active service population.

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.

Infntcd

Infanticides per capita. A ranked ratio of number of infanticides to population – Average for the years 1825-1830.

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.

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.

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.

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

Distanc

Distance to Paris (km). Distance of each department centroid to the centroid of the Seine (Paris)

Area

Area (1000 km^2).

Pop1831

Population in 1831, in 1000s

Source

  • 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

https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab/Guerry/

Details

Sf object, units in m. EPSG 27572: NTF (Paris) / Lambert zone II.

Examples

if (requireNamespace("sf", quietly = TRUE)) {
  library(sf)
  data(guerry)

  plot(guerry["Donatns"])
}