Demography, Economics, Culture

Hervé LE BRAS Démographe, Institut national d'études démographiques (INED) ; historien, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). Contact : herve.le-bras@ehess.fr

Relations between demography and economics are complex. Studied from the beginning by economists (Petty, Malthus), demography has not evolved as a branch of economics. During the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century demography has been deeply influenced by biology and culture. Nevertheless by the mid-20th century, demography returned to the social sciences thereby facilitating the analysis of its links with economics (Sauvy, Fourastié, Becker). Today, demographic studies lean on cultural anthropology and economics as shown in this article through several cases. Finally these two disciplines appear to be complementary, the first one being focused on the long term and the other one on the short term, in particular as regards financial aspects.