Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, Emmanuel Todd is the grandson of the writer, Paul Nizan, the son of the journalist Olivier Todd, and the father of the historian David Todd. The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who pioneered microhistory, was a friend of the family and offered him his first history book. Aged 10, Todd wanted to become an archeologist. He studied at the Lycée international de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he was a member of the Communist Youth. He then studied political science at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and went on to prepare a Ph.D. in history at the University of Cambridge. He defended his doctoral thesis on Seven peasant communities in pre-industrial Europe. A comparative study of French, Italian and Swedish rural parishes (18th and early 19th century) in 1976.

Todd attracted attention in 1976 when he, at 25 years old, predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates: (The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere).

He then worked for a time in the literary service of Le Monde daily, then returned to research, working on the hypothesis of a determination of ideologies and religious or political beliefs by familial systems (Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System, 1983). He then wrote, among other books, The Invention of Europe (1990) and The Fate of Immigrants (1994), in which he defended the "French model" of integration of immigrants.

Todd opposed to the Maastricht Treaty in the 1992 referendum. In 1995, he wrote a memo for the Fondation Saint-Simon, which became famous — the media thereafter attributed to him the paternity of the expression "" (social crack or social gap), used by Jacques Chirac during the 1995 electoral campaign in order to distinguish himself from his rival Édouard Balladur. Todd, however, has rejected this paternity, and attributed the expression to Marcel Gauchet.

In The Breakdown of the American Order (2001), Todd predicted the fall of the United States as the sole superpower and the emergence of a multipolar world, with the rise of Europe, Japan and Russia.

In spite of his opposition to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Todd expressed himself in favour of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in the referendum of 2005, advocating a protectionist framework at the European level for the future policies of the Union.

In (2007), written with fellow demographist Youssef Courbage, Todd criticized Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilizations, pointing instead to indices of a convergence in styles of life and in values among civilisations.

With an English translation

• The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, 1976
• Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System, 1983
• The causes of progress: culture, authority, and change 1984
• The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture, 1988
• The Breakdown of the American Order, 2001

Without an English translation

• Le Fou et le Prolétaire, Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1979.
• L'Invention de la France, (with Hervé Le Bras), Éditions Pluriel-Hachettes, Paris, 1981.
• La Nouvelle France, Éditions du Seuil, coll. L'Histoire immédiate, Paris, 1988.
• L'invention de l'Europe (The Invention of Europe), 1990
• Le destin des immigrés (The Fate of Immigrants), 1994
• L'illusion économique. Essai sur la stagnation des sociétés développées (The Economic Illusion), 1998
• La Diversité du monde : Famille et modernité, Éditions du Seuil, coll. L'histoire immédiate, Paris, 1999.
• Le Rendez-vous des civilisations, with Youssef Courbage, Le Seuil, coll. La République des idées, 2007.
• Après la démocratie, Gallimard, Paris, 2008.