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Demography 371
count, and this brings us to a special side of the demographic perspective - the
working population.
At any given moment, the working population can be divided into four
concepts:
a. the working population corresponding to the aims of the plan;
b. the working population corresponding to the training which could be given
by the various existing types of instruction;
c. the working population corresponding to the training actually received. This
training is not necessarily that which corresponds to the training possibilities,
for it is the combined result of such possibilities and of the use that is made
of them. Everything may be on hand for training notaries, but if that profes-
sion is disdained by the population, the schools wil remain empty and there
will not be any notaries;
d. the working population corresponding to the termination of the plan, that
is, when needs have been satisfied.
Of all these working populations, only the third has any real existence. But the
calculation of the other three is a rewarding exercise. They must not differ too
much from the third one, otherwise they give rise to tensions that are responsi-
ble for all kinds of troubles. And if the differences are too great, it may become
necessary, as a result, to rearrange the development plan.
It is the task of the demographer, with the assistance of the economist, the
teacher, and technicians representing the various branches of production, to
calculate the above possibilities. We are still only at the experimental stage, but
there is no doubt that this branch of demography is going to be developed very
rapidly in the course of the next few years. The interpretation of these prospects
is certainly difficult. The relationship between the training of producers and
the aims of production is not a relationship in the sense in which that word is
employed in mathematics, or even in the natural sciences. A given type of
training does not correspond to one single class of production but to a whole
range of production; which means that there exists an uncertain quantity in
production which corresponds to a given type of training. This is just as well,
moreover, for this uncertain quantity makes it possible for technical progress
to take place without becoming too inhuman.
57. So long as a large part of the economy only requires a relatively unskilled
labour force, the question of training is not of any great moment. But with
technical development and the increasing activities of services connected with
teaching, culture and health, the finding of trained personnel is going to depend
more and more on the number of suitable persons available for training. The
discovery of such persons sufficiently early so that their talents can be made to
serve the aims and objects of the economic development plan wil then become
an essential task calling for the collaboration of teachers, economists, demog-
raphers, psychologists and sociologists.
Regional prospects
58. We wil assume that the development plan has been chosen. If everything