ABSTRACT
Alfred Sauvy, prolific and professionally dedicated, is one of the great men of contemporary demography. His versatility and imagination coupled with a capacity for sustained abstract reasoning and close acquaintance with demographic evidence around the world, make him outstanding. As the first director of Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques, the only national center for population research, he pioneered in the application of demographic analysis to national problems; and as his country's representative on the United Nations Population Commission, he long provided brilliant leadership in that body. This chapter discusses the theoretical parts of the analysis and his main preoccupation, the effects of population change. From the standpoint of intellectual history it is interesting how rapidly since Sauvy's treatise appeared in 1966, the discussion of the effects of population has moved. Although each person is seeking satisfaction, the effect of all seekers using ever better means is to increase stress and deny goals that once were attained.
