Population growth has always been a politically loaded subject of inquiry. From the debate sparked by Malthus's Essay to the still present apocalyptic warnings about overpopulation or the declining birth rate, demographers and statisticians have evolved in troubled waters, where progressively more sophisticated quantitative techniques have sometimes gone hand in hand with dubious social philosophy. In her survey of post-1930 American demography, Susan Greenhalgh has argued that the institutionalization and professionalization of this field as an academic discipline required scholars to draw ‘sharp boundaries between themselves and activists’, such as those involved in the promotion of objectives like birth control, eugenics or immigration restriction. She added, however, that despite the efforts expanded in its quest for scientific status, demography had remained quite open to ideological influence, fundamentally Eurocentric and devoid of reflexivity. A detailed inquiry into the origins of the Population Association of America (PAA) has shown that up to the 1930s, the study of population attracted more activists than social scientists and that the two types could coexist quite happily within the same organization. In the case of France, the polemic that shook the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED) in the early 1990s showed that demarcation lines can easily get blurred and that the simultaneously cognitive and political dimensions of population study can suddenly reappear with the utmost clarity.