Kirk 1996, Demographic Transition Theory 

The Forerunners

• Demographic transition model: classification of populations differentiated by different combinations of fertility and mortality
• Thompson:
  • Group A: falling rates of increase + potential population decline
  • Group B: both birth and deaths had fallen, but death rates had declined earlier and more rapidly than death rates
  • Group C: neither birth/death rates were under control
  • Classified as Malthusian
• Landry:
  • 3 stages of population development
  • Primitive
  • Intermediate
  • Contemporary
• Carr-Saunders:
  • Small family system and its causes

The Demographic Transition Theory

• Notestein
  • Thought Western + Central European populations would peak in 1950 and decline after
• Critique: too much attention to socio-economic factors

The Historical Record

• Criticism
  • Large differences in pre-modern fertility were not taken into account in the transition theory!
  • Mortality decline always preceded fertility decline → not true
  • Actual decline in European regions was not tied closely to socio-economic modernization

The European Fertility Project

• Initial fertility reduction
• Family limitation was not practiced before the fertility decline began
• Family planning programs = irreversible process
• Cultural setting influence the onset and spread of fertility decline
• Transition theory has influenced how the United Nations and the World Bank have based their population forecasts on the assumption of standard transition
• The transition has occurred under diverse socio-economic conditions
  • Transition is not a necessary pre-condition for development

The Search for Causality: Mortality

1. Rising incomes + development of the modern state → reductions in mortality
2. Revolution in medicine → reduction in child mortality
3. Increase in the use of antibiotics → reduction in epidemic and contagious diseases

• Feature of mortality + fertility transitions: increasingly faster tempo
• Mortality decline = cause of fertility decline
  • Promotes economic productivity

The Search for Causality: Economic Theory

• Economic theory
  • Pre-modern high fertility = rational behavior
  • Fertility decline = based on rational choices
• Critique: didn’t take into account culture

The Search for Causality: Caldwell’s Restatement

• Integrate economic, cultural, and institutional theories of fertility decline
• Pre-transitional fertility behavior = rational, only within the framework established by social ends

Conclusion

• Existence of homeostasis in historical populations

  • This view could lead to a better understanding of what post-transitional levels of fertility are likely to be

• Population aging

  • Will lead to pronatalist measures by governments

• Old guidelines are no longer appropriate

• Much more attention will have to be given to raising fertility levels

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