In an article published in Science in 2002, James Oeppen and James Vaupel, observing a constant linear progression (at arate of 3 months per year) in maximum life expectancies since 1841, concluded that the trend was set to continue for manyyears to come. A critical re-assessment of the data and...

Up until the 1970s, flu epidemics commonly caused 10,000 to 20,000 direct deaths each year in France, not counting those who died from complications of the disease. The development of an effective vaccine, regularly reformulated in response to new viral mutations, has brought a ten-fold...

Implementing a population policy implies that an optimal population size can be defined, based on the quantity of available resources and on the level of progress in production technologies. But these economic questions cannot be dissociated from the population age structure, trends in life...

After converging towards replacement level, fertility in the Maghreb is now following contrasting trends. In Tunisia, the total fertility rate (TFR) has levelled off and remained stable at 2.1 children perwoman since 1999. In Algeria, after dipping to 2.2 in the early 2000s, fertility has...