[Higher rural mortality or lower urban mortality in France? (author's transl)].
Examination of crude and standardized rates, life expectancies and death probabilities by age shows an excess of mortality for males and females in little towns (less than 10 000 inhabitants) and on the other hand a lower mortality in parisian area. One aspect of the problem--relation between mortality and urbanisation (localities size)--is not the same with the sexes. For males, there is a lower mortality in rural area, on the contrary, for females, mortality is decreasing while the size of the locality is increasing. It would be possible to explain this results by parameters closely connected with urbanisation, such as socio-economic groups, marital status, health system. A next research will take this parameters and medical causes into account.