Adolphe Landry on the Demographic Revolution

Abstract

Among early theorists of the the French demographer Adolphe Landry (1874-1956) occupies a prominent place. Landry considered the task of describing and understanding the demographic transition-the secular change from a demographic regime of high fertility and high mortality to a regime of low fertility and low mortality-to be the central task of demographic theory. To underscore the radical transformation entailed by the transition, Landry characterized the phenomenon as a 'revolution, a label that also provided the title of his 1934 book La revolution demographique (Paris. Sirey), his seminal contribution to modern demographic literature. (When Landry wrote this work he was professor at the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he had occupied the chairfor the history of economic doctrines since 1907, albeit with interruptions demanded by his political career as deputy in the French parliament from his native Corsica and by service in several ministerial posts in governments of the Third Republic.) One year before the appearance of La revolution demographique, Landry contributed an essay, bearing the same title, to a multilingual Festschriftfor the Swedish economist Gustav Cassel (Economic Essays in Honour of Gustav Cassel, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1933). This piece is little known (it is not included, for example, in the comprehensive scientific bibliography appended to Alfred Sauvy's article commemorating Landry that appeared in the October-December 1956 issue of Population), but it offers a lucid summary of the main findings and arguments on the demographic transition expounded by Landry. It is printed in full below in a translation by Odile Frank. The stylized pattern of transition described by Landry has three phases. The first is characterized by a sort of natural fertility-fertility unaffected by economic calculus-hence by population growth regulated by fluctuating mortality. In the second phase, people's striving to maintain a standard of living already achieved leads to restrictions on marriage-either its postponement or celibacy. Both of these demographic patterns are patterns of equilibrium, consistent, nevertheless, with periods of population growth permitted by increased productivity and lowered mortality. In contrast, the third phase exhibits a radical break with the past: aspirations toward ever higher standards of living induce couples to limit theirfertility within marriage, and a demographic equi-