Croissance économique, croissance démographique et hétérogénéité des niveaux de développement : éléments d'analyse

The concern about the analytic and empirical relationship between population growth and developement process is still widely controversial. In this paper, the purpose is devoted to the identification of several statistical patterns of this relationship, varying alongside with the simultaneous processes of economic growth and of fertility transition. The lack of statistical significance that has been observed by estimating this link between endogeneous GDP growth rates and exogeneous population rate of expansion for years before 1975 might then be the result of the contradiction between opposite temporal or regional patterns of this relationship, more than the indefectible proof of the absence of any relationship at all. Two dimensions of those oppositions are then explored, dealing successively with the heterogeneity of national and regional experiences of economic growth and of fertility transition. Finally introducing varying patterns of fertility and mortality evolution in this empirical investigation leads to the generation of simultaneous specifications of the relationship potentially occuring during the process of fertility transition. (Full text in French)