Alfred Sauvy and Immigration: Commentary on the short paper published in 1946 in the first issue of Population

Alfred Sauvy’s short paper published in 1946 in the first issue of Population has a rather strange title: “Évaluation des besoins de l’immigration française” (Assessment of French immigration needs). In fact, it concerns neither “immigration needs”, nor “French immigration”, but rather the needs of France in terms of immigration. Just after the Liberation, France lacked the necessary manpower to undertake its economic reconstruction, and the idea of recruiting foreign workers, as was done after the First World War, seemed a logical one. Sauvy assumes that this utilitarian attitude to immigration is shared by all; he mentions the major contribution to be made by farmers, construction workers and miners brought in from abroad. But he takes the idea one step further: beyond their contribution to rebuilding the economy, immigrants would also provide a solution, over the longer term, to the country’s demographic imbalance and, more specifically, to the challenge of population ageing. Like many of his contemporaries, Sauvy was haunted by this problem. In 1946, 16% of France’s population was aged over 60. While this proportion was much smaller than that observed today (24%), it was a world record at the time, as Sauvy does not fail to point out. For Sauvy, this “abnormally high proportion” was attributable to the combined effects of secular population decline and the collapse of births during the Great War.

With considerable economy of means, Sauvy runs a simulation to determine France’s needs in terms of immigration. His stated target is a “stationary population” as defined by Alfred Lotka, namely an “ideal” population in which young people are sufficiently numerous and fertile to ensure generation replacement and to maintain the “structural balance”. The method is extremely simple. Sauvy takes the age structure of the French population on 1 January 1931, as indicated by the census of that year, then determines the number of old people aged 60 or above. He then calculates how many additional people would be needed in the other age groups in order to produce a stationary population pyramid. The difference between the actual situation and the model gives him the order of magnitude of the extra people needed. Why use the 1931 census as a basis? Because it is the last one held in a context of full employment. Sauvy’s goal of economic and demographic reconstruction does not imply taking France back to the conditions prevailing before the war, but aims rather to return to the level that preceded the crisis of the 1930s.

The conclusion he draws is striking: France will not return to demographic equilibrium unless it brings in some 5,290,000 immigrants, among whom 2,450,000 adults! In a country with just 40 million inhabitants (a contemporary provisional estimate), this meant increasing the general population by 13%. In what timeframe? Sauvy doesn’t say. He compares two stocks without looking at the annual flows required for one to catch up with the other. So his model was of little use to political decision-makers. If we look at estimated net migration to France since 1946, we see that it was not until 2005 – some 60 years later – that the aggregate total reached the 5.3 million mark announced by Sauvy! Did he realize that his figure was grossly exaggerated? It is impossible to say, given the calmly composed tone of his announcement.

Clearly, this 1946 paper does not cast Sauvy as a precursor of the anti-immigration lobby. He never championed the idea of a closed population summoned to reproduce by its own means. Quite the contrary, his solution to the French ageing problem relied on bringing in young people from abroad. In his eyes, the stationary regime was by no means a synonym of closed reproduction. Later in the text he mentions the need to maintain inflows over the long term in order to restore the demographic balance through immigration. He indicates two ways of doing this: through “a 15% increase...