Thirty years of economic and social life 2014 Edition
This new issue from the “Insee Références” collection is the first of its kind to present a full overview of the economic and social changes that have marked French society since 1980.
Back to the future: thirty years of demographic forecasts
Didier Blanchet, Françoise le Gallo
The French population has seen several shifts or interruptions in trends during the last decades. These have had a knock-on effect on the assumptions and results of population forecasts regularly produced by INSEE. At the start of the 1980s, all available data pointed to a fairly rapid halt in the growth of the French population: a fall in fertility, a sharp reduction in migratory flows, a slowdown in life expectancy gains. This prospect of a turnaround in the population gradually faded during the following thirty years. Population ageing has, for its part, ben confirmed over time even if the discourse on the causes of this ageing has, for its part, evolved slightly. The predominant effect of longer life expectancy has been reaffirmed over successive forecasting exercises.