Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

3 68 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat
with complex phenomena which go far beyond those set in motion by the mere
ageing of the organism.
The demographic consequences would be far-reaching. The ability to have
children after the age of fifty would make it possible to build up a family in
successive stages: for instance, two children between 20 and 24 and two more
between 50 and 54 years of age, and possibly with different marriage partners.
However, four children per family would constitute a very high fertility rate
which, if applied to all women, would very soon lead to intolerably high
population densities. Consequently, society would have to take steps to prevent
a certain number of women from having that second family after the age of 50,
even if they should desire it. We would thus go back - partly at any rate - to
a social fertility situation, allowing only the first family, for example, to decide
for itself in perfect freedom, thanks to the discovery of efficient and easily used
contraceptives.
50, We could cite a good many more biological developments that would have
important demographic repercussions. If, for instance, it became possible to
transplant a fertilized human ovule into the body of a mammal for gestation
purposes, the whole institution of the family would be upset.
If a method could be discovered for changing the genetic heritage artificially
and creating new beings by intervening at the level of molecular biology, the
whole evolutionary process of living species would be transformed.
It is for science fiction to put these questions to us, but it remains for the
demographer to gauge their results on population development.
III. DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
51. W e have spent a long time on the biological aspects of demographic events.
This is not surprising. As we have already said, the human being is only the last
link in a long chain of living beings that have gone before him and prepared for
his arrival. It is he who has taken the phenomena of reproduction and old age
out of pure biology, though of course they remain, in essence, biological
phenomena. It is by prolonging them existentially that they become economic,
social and cultural phenomena. Let us examine the human being’s economic
activities first.
52. Man is a consumer and a producer of goods and services. Before the
agricultural revolution, he was content to consume whatever the earth provided
for him. Agriculture turned him into a producer and mankind organized itself
in what is called a subsistence economy, whereby products are consumed on the
spot, or practically so, by the producers, or at any rate all those either directly
or indirectly associated with production.14 There is no intermediary between men
and goods and services. Money, by enabling goods and services to be exchanged,
ushered in an important development and thenceforward a market economy
took the place of the subsistence economy.