Alfred Sauvy


Alfred Sauvy was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War. In an article published in the French magazine, L'Observateur on August 14, 1952, Sauvy said:
Sauvy coined Third World by analogy with the Third Estate and the above quote is a paraphrase of Sieyès's famous sentence about the Third Estate during the French Revolution.

Biography

Sauvy was born in Villeneuve-de-la-Raho in 1898, and educated at École Polytechnique. After graduating, he worked at Statistique Générale de France until 1937. He took part in the X-Crise Group. From 1938, he was economic advisor to Minister of Finance Paul Reynaud until the second world war broke out in 1939. Under the Nazi occupation, Sauvy contributed to the Bulletins rouge-brique, a government-sanctioned periodical. After the war, Charles de Gaulle offered to appoint him to the position of General Secretary for Family and Population, but Sauvy preferred to devote himself to demographics. He became director of INED and simultaneously represented France at the commission of Statistics and Population of the United Nations. He wrote for Le Monde until his death in October 1990.

Demography

Writing in 1949, Sauvy described potential overpopulation as a 'false problem' and argued against attempts at global population control. He suggested examining countries on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they lack the raw materials and natural resources that can support a larger population. Otherwise, he thought that we run the risk of underpopulating a country that could support a much larger population.

Work