Alfred Sauvy on the World Population Problem

Are global population estimates merely proofs of statisticians' skills in compiling data, or do they also represent a reality that has a bearing on things that do mattereconomic development, adequacy of natural resources, population policy? Is there a population -as distinct from diverse problems affected by demographic makeup or demographic change, more or less tightly compartmentalized within individual countries, regions, or particular social strata? What are the implications of the answers to these questions for population policy? During his long and extraordinarily productive career as a student of population and human society, Alfred Sauvy often addressed these and closely related issues, but perhaps nowhere as concisely yet ambitiously as he did in the article, printed below unabridged, that appeared in 1949 in Population, the journal of the Institut national d'e'tudes de'mographiques, the premier French demographic research organization, then recently founded by Sauvy. After more than four decades, some of the controversial issues broached in the article have been at least partially resolved. To some extent the terms of the questions themselves may have shifted-as a result of changes in economic and political systems and in international relations; because of the record of economic, social, and demographic developments; and in view of experience with public policies fashioned to influence them. Still, the discussion presented by Sauvy is of more than historical interest: many of his insights remain relevant to the contemporary debate about population and population policy. Alfred Sauvy died in October 1990 in Paris. A commemorative piece on the man and his oeuvre, by Nathan Keyfitz, appears elsewhere in this issue. The article originally appeared under the title Le faux probleme' de la population mondiale' (The 'false problem of world population), Population, Vol. 4, no. 3 (July-September 1949). The translation is by Paul Demeny

Political science · Politics · Population · Population growth · Public policy · Social policy · Sociology · World population · Census and Population Estimation · Demography · Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management · Law

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