Our history

Immediately after World War II, in which France and many other nations suffered massive human losses, the French state needed a clear view of the country’s demographic situation. The Institut National d’Études Démographiques (French Institute for Demographic Studies) was founded by decree on October 24, 1945, to meet this need. The country’s social ministries were tasked with administrative supervision of the new institute, whose official missions were to compile documentation and conduct surveys to inform the authorities on “the material and moral resources most apt to further the quantitative growth and qualitative amelioration of the population,” and to ensure the diffusion of demographic knowledge throughout French society, from the country’s policymakers outward to the public at large. 

The statistician and economist Alfred Sauvy was appointed first director of INED, a position he occupied until 1962. Sauvy was committed to developing the Institute into a multidisciplinary research center and immediately hired researchers trained in wide range of different sciences and disciplines, including mathematics, sociology, and genetics. Under his direction, a French school of demography came into being that contributed greatly to INED’s impact and renown. Strongly influenced by the works of the American mathematician and statistician Alfred J. Lotka (1880-1949) and the French statistician Pierre Depoid (1909-1968), the first INED demographers (mostly graduates of France’s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique) developed original methods of demographic analysis. In parallel, the researcher Louis Henry founded the field of demographic history in using Ancien Régime parish records to study a period prior to statistical collection.  

INED soon broadened its strictly quantitative approach to demography (measurement and analysis of births, deaths, marriage, and migration) to encompass the contextual and explanatory factors driving those dynamics, particularly by way of studies of conjugality and family-work life interactions. Later the lens of Insitute research was opened to take in not just French but world population dynamics, connections between population and economic development, and “Third World populations, a term coined by Sauvy in 1952.

As early as 1946 INED launched the scientific journal Population, ensuring that its research findings could already be diffused. Population is the main demography journal in France, and the reference French-language journal worldwide for population studies. 

On March 12, 1986, by state decree, INED became a public research institution (EPST), under the administrative supervision of the ministries in charge of research and social affairs. Its official missions since that time have been to develop and diffuse demographic knowledge and to contribute to training researchers through the practice of research. Our center is one of six EPST institutions and we collaborate with several of the others, particularly the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), and the Institute for Research and Development (IRD).

Since 1986, INED has been organized as an independent research center.

In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, new researchers holding a PhD in a range of different disciplines (demography, history, sociology, economics, medicine, geography, and others) joined INED by way of a state competitive examination. Because they were free to develop their own research subjects, the research areas studied become much more diverse, now focusing on health, aging, geographic mobility, international comparisons, history of sciences, and social inequalities, particularly gender inequality. 

The Institute also began hiring research engineers and technicians, again through a competitive national exam process, to provide its teams with a wide range of support services.

Around this time the journal Population was repurposed to respond to the demands of the international scientific community: the editorial committee became more diverse and an external peer evaluation procedure was put in place. Contributors now came from outside France and their profiles were more diverse. In 1989, the journal began publishing a selection of articles in English translation to reach the non-French scientific community. And since 2002, Population has been published in full in both languages, as has Population & Societies, our scientific monthly bulletin for the public at large, which became bilingual in 2000. 

From the 2000s, INED further developed the international dimension of its research through substantial publication of our researchers’ work in international journals, collaboration on international research projects, and INED researchers’ participation in international conferences, including English-language events. Then-INED director François Héran established an international relations office that later became the ffice of International Affairs and Partnerships; its mission was to facilitate and increase the visibility of a wide range of partnerships. Also at this time we intensified our collaborative work with French institutions as well as universities and research centers abroad. Since 2000, INED has also been the host site of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). And since 2005 we have participated in the European Doctoral School of Demography, which brings together seven EU research institutions and universities to provide selected students with a year of top-quality, intensive training in demography. 

During the same period, research funding procedures changed. French national institution funding programs were developed, most notably the National Research Agency, founded in 2005, and the Investments in the Future Program; more recently, the France 2030 program. INED was an integral part of this new system. In 2019, the École des Hautes Études de Démographie [School of advanced studies in demography] was created, run jointly by INED and the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne with support from six partner universities, eight doctoral schools, and ten research units. INED research is also funded by international or foreign institutions, notably the European Research Agency. 

Data collection is a fundamental component of research as conducted at INED. From its founding, and thanks initially to sociologist and demographer Alain Girard and sociologist and public opinion specialist Jean Stoetzel, the Institute was on the cutting-edge for surveys on French people’s opinions and attitudes in matters of fertility, number of children desired, female employment, immigration, and others. 

Major surveys of this kind are key to INED’s reputation and renown, as became clear with our very first survey—on choice of spouse—conducted in 1959. More recently, a number of these surveys, some done jointly with other institutions such as INSEE or INSERM, focused on sensitive subjects long deemed difficult to measure scientifically. Examples are surveys on French people’s sexual behaviors (CSF, 2004-2006) and violence and gender relations (VIRAGE, 2015); also surveys on specific population groups such as second-generation and third-generation immigrants (Geographic Mobility and Social Integration, from 1992; Trajectories and Origins [T&O] 1, from 2008; and T&O 2 in 2020); others on inhabitants of France’s overseas territories; and still others on unhoused people.

INED has also been involved in longitudinal studies. One such, jointly run with INSERM, follows a cohort of children born in France in 2011: the ELFE cohort [French Longitudinal Study of Children]. We collect and contribute French data for EU level comparative studies of family and intergenerational relations (ERFI I in 2005 and ERFI 2 in 2024, in connection with the Gender and Generations research program GGP) and for reference international databases such as the Human Mortality Database (HMD). And we analyze national administrative data—from the French National Health Data System (SNDS)—for use in specific research projects. 

Here at INED we often develop innovative survey and statistical study methodology. Two examples: the multimode approach, which combines online questionnaires with telephone or face-to-face interviews to improve our surveys and more effectively account for different population group profiles, and the design of quantitative life history studies to improve collection and analysis of life trajectories and interactions among different spheres of life (family, geographical location, occupational situations, and others). 

Since 2019 INED personnel work in our building on the Campus Condorcet research campus in Aubervilliers, just outside Paris. INED is a founding member and partner of the Campus Condorcet. Being on a multi-institution campus has created new dynamics, particularly for the development of new partnership agreements. 

Over our history, and while remaining a public service, INED has been able to reinvent itself as a reference research institute both in France and abroad. This is in large part due to the research subjects and issues we study, which change together with and in response to the demographic, social, and economic changes underway in the population or populations, and the approaches and methods we use—some of which are developed by or in partnership with INED—to explore and better understand these changes.

Rosental P.-A., 2003, L'intelligence démographique. Sciences et politiques des populations en France (1930-1960), Paris Editions Odile Jacob, 368 p.

Girard Alain, 1986, L'Institut national d'études démographiques. Histoire et développement, Paris, Ined, 253 p.

Sardon Jean-Paul, 1995, Présentation du numéro thématique : Cinquante années de Population, Population 1995, 50(6), pp. 1329-1331.