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Demography 311
ulation ill adapted to the aims of production. There is the danger that the gap
between the working population required for carrying out the plan and the
working population receiving a university training wil be widened, and we have
already shown how this discrepancy was at the bottom of dangerous social
tensions. The Human Rights Conference, held in Teheran in 1968, accentuated
still further this conflict in laying down the right of each individual to choose
freely his own employment.
70. If absolute priority is given to the right to health, that also can render the
aims of the production plan unattainable. We have already observed how the
increasingly excessive cost of the new forms of medical care is likely to result
in a revision of the principle whereby society is in duty bound to do everything
possible to protect the health of its members.
71. The right to leisure, or, more precisely, to rest is of course central to any
plan for economic development. There are as a matter of fact two ways to
utilize the results of increased productivity: produce more per capita or shorten
working hours. Both ways have been used in the past, doubtless without fully
realizing that such a choice was involved. There is today a tendency to believe
that one can independently set length of leisure time and production goals,
leaving it to automation to iron out the difficulties. This is of course a view of
the problem fraught with illusions. In fact automation does not decrease the
number of jobs, but rather transforms them; and if in the long run one can
succeed in increasing at the same time production per capita and the length of
leisure time, it must be realized that these are two objectives which can be irrec-
oncilable if one wants to advance too quickly.
72. Finally, there is a right which so far has been looked forward to rather
than experienced by the majority of the human race, but which is gradually be-
coming a reality and constitutes an essential variable in economic and social
development, namely, the right to plan one’s family.
Short-term j7uctuations in the economy
73. Hitherto we have spoken of economic progress as though it were a con-
tinuous movement towards a better way of living. But we know, in actual fact,
that it is made up of a series of more or less regular jolts, involving improvement,
on the one hand, followed by losses on the other. As long as fertility remained
at the stage described as ‘social’, very powerful economic fluctuations were
needed before their effects were felt on the number of births. But now that the
birth of a child is left to the discretion of the parents, all the economic ups and
downs consciously experienced, or simply expected or even imagined, are likely
to have a decided repercussion on fertility. It is not even a question here of the
effects of the fluctuation itself, but of the use which is made of them, and
behavioural changes can take place in couples which are quite out of proportion
to the economic happening as such. Moreover, boomerang effects are to be
expected. Indeed, while economic development exerts pressure on the fertility