[Health workforce forecasting carried out by the C.S.D.M. (1964-2004)].

During the last 4 decades, the Centre has performed 16 pieces of forecast on the various health professions in France, the majority being devoted to medical doctors. During the 60's, information were scarce, and calculations on both the inflows of future new graduates and the outflows of future deaths and retirements could not reach an acceptable level of relevance. In 1972, a numerus clausus system was established at the beginning of medical training. Moreover, efforts were deployed to collect better data and improve projection techniques. All these factors contributed to raise strongly the quality of the forecasting work. The discrepancies between the projected and actual trends were narrowing, as showed below: [table: see text] The forecasts were based on the demographic projection techniques and the results obtained showed not only the total number of active physicians in the country but equally the distribution by age groups of this total number. The latter element allows the predictions of the aging process of the medical profession as an impact of the present-day policies concerning medical student intake (numerus clausus).