The 1999 survey was the occasion for a major renovation, inspired in large part by the work of Ined (Institut national d'études démographiques) on family situations and histories.

During the March 1999 population census, 380,000 men and women living in ordinary homes completed a supplementary bulletin on their "family history", including questions on their origins, their children,

their periods of life as a couple and their social background, as well as on the languages used within their national and regional families; the same information was collected from 6,600 people living in community, including 1,700 male prisoners.

The demographic questionnaire of this 1999 edition of the Family Survey, the first to also address men, has been profoundly renovated and will allow for numerous studies covering family histories in all their complexity. The exploitation of complementary questions on languages and speakers will also provide much awaited information on the linguistic diversity of our country and the dynamics of national integration throughout this century.

T1 1999