w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-07-17/In focus

I first constructed a SPARQL query which takes all people born after 1970 with an article in Wikipedia in French by occupation and citizenship. I then checked if those people have a father with an article in Wikipedia in French or a mother with an article in Wikipedia in French. I haven't controlled for the occupation of the parents, and assumed that having an article in Wikipedia is a sign of celebrity regardless of occupation and country of citizenship.

My first query was the following:

{{SPARQL|query= PREFIX rdfs:

PREFIX schema:

PREFIX wd:

PREFIX wdt:

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?year ?father ?mother WHERE {

?item wdt:P31 wd:Q5;

wdt:P106/wdt:P279* wd:Q33999;

wdt:P27 wd:Q142;

wdt:P569 ?birthdate;

rdfs:label ?itemLabel FILTER(lang(?itemLabel) = "fr") .

?sitelink schema:about ?item;

schema:isPartOf .

FILTER(YEAR( ?birthdate ) >= 1970 )

BIND(YEAR(?birthdate) AS ?year)

OPTIONAL {

?item wdt:P22 ?father.

?fatherlink schema:about ?father;

schema:isPartOf .

}

OPTIONAL {

?item wdt:P25 ?mother.

?motherlink schema:about ?mother;

schema:isPartOf .

}

}

}}

All other queries are derived from this original query.For instance, we have the following query for actors and actresses in the United States https://w.wiki/6sAW All computations were done using the Observable platform, which makes it easy to visualize data using JavaScript.See

• [https://observablehq.com/@pac02/an-introduction-to-observable-for-wikidata-users?collection=@pac02/introductions-to-observable Introduction to Observable for Wikidata users]
• [https://observablehq.com/collection/@pac02/notable-parents A collection of notebooks about children of celebrities]

File:Probability of having a father or a mother with a wikipedia article for French people born after 1970.png

I collected data about people of French citizenship ({{Wikidata entity link|P27}} is {{Wikidata entity link|Q142}}) born after 1970 with an article in the French Wikipedia for several occupations. I assumed that having an article in Wikipedia is a sign of celebrity.

So I chose to look at {{Wikidata entity link|Q33999}}, {{Wikidata entity link|Q639669}}, {{Wikidata entity link|Q36180}}, {{Wikidata entity link|Q2066131}}, {{Wikidata entity link|Q82955}} and {{Wikidata entity link|Q2526255}}. For each occupation, I computed the proportion of people whose father or mother, or both, had an article in the French Wikipedia.

I found that 8.0% of French film directors born after 1970 have a father with an article. This probability is slightly higher than for actors and actresses (7.7%) and much higher than in other occupations such as musicians (4.7%), writers (4.1%), politicians (3.8%) and athletes (1.8%).

Looking at the probability to have either a mother or a father with an article, I found similar results. The probability to have a father or a mother with an article is 8.6% for film directors, 8.3% for actors and actresses, 5% for musicians, 4.6% for writers, 4.4% for politicians and 1.9% for athletes.

Those numbers provide some evidence that children of celebrities in France are much more successful in French cinema than in other occupations.

File:Probability of being the children of a parent (mother or father) with a wikipedia article by gender and occupation2.png

The probability of being the child of a celebrity is much higher for women than for men. 9.8% of actresses with a biography in the French Wikipedia have a parent with a biography. At the same time, 6.8% of actors with a biography have a parent with a biography. I found the same pattern for film directors: 11.2% for women versus 7.3% for men.

File:Probability of being the children of a parent (mother or father) with a wikipedia article by country of citizenship.png

Once I had evidence that there is a huge phenomenon of children of celebrities in French cinema compared to other occupations, I compared the number to other countries. The methodology is slightly different since I look at people with at least one Wikipedia article (whatever the language) and not only an article in the French Wikipedia.

Among French actors and actresses born after 1970 who have a Wikipedia page, 8% have a father or mother with a Wikipedia article. This proportion is much higher than for Italian (2.4%), Spanish (1.8%), Belgian (2.3%), Swiss (1.8%) or Canadian (2.0%) actors and actresses. This confirms that there are disproportionately more children of famous people in French cinema.

This data exploration shows strong evidence supporting the nepo-babies hypothesis in French cinema. It would be useful to go further, and look at the occupation of parents, as well as look at more occupations and more countries.

All feedback, improvements and complements to my analysis are welcome.

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