Economic factors in population growth : proceedings of a conference held by the international economic association at Valescure, France

For its 1973 annual conference the International Economic Association decided to take advantage of the fact that many of the world's demographers were gathered together in Europe to consider some of the economic aspects of population growth.
The conference, planned by a programme committee under Ansley Coale's chairmanship, looked afresh, and now in more dynamic terms, at the concepts of an optimum population and of an optimum population change. In this field three important papers by G. Ohlin, P. Guillaumont and A. Sauvy, together with the relevant discussions of them, represent the first part of the book.
These are followed by papers examining the problem of fertility as an exercise of economic choice. Here Paul Schultz and Yoram Ben Porath, the latter using Israeli data, are the paper writers. There follow papers by H. Leridon on economic factors in fertility, by E. van de Walle and R. Lesthaeghe analysing the economic factors in the Belgian and French decline of fertility, and by A. Hermalin and N. V. Sovani analysing data for Asian countries.
The conference next turned to the problems of employment in the face of population growth, with papers by A. Nassef and by P. Visaria, and to problems of labour transfer and migration with papers by I. Hume, M. Todaro, S. Åkerman and A. Norberg.