Mortality–fertility synergies during the demographic transition in the developed world

Abstract

The classic theory used to explain the demographic transition assumes that mortality is the key explanatory variable influencing the decline in fertility. However, the empirical results obtained in what is known as the Princeton European Fertility Project have led many specialists to question this assumption. Using both national and provincial aggregated data for 25 countries over a long time span, the analysis reported in this paper found that mortality does indeed play a fundamental role in accounting for the main demographic changes that occurred both before and during the transitional period. Others’ research based on individual data has shown clearly that the number of surviving children was indeed an important factor for reproductive decisions. My analysis, using aggregated data, reached largely similar conclusions regarding the role of mortality in changing reproductive trends, via its impact on nuptiality and marital fertility at different stages of the demographic transition.

Keywords:

• demographic transition
• fertility
• mortality
• nuptiality
• natural fertility
• historical demography
• European Fertility Project
• developed countries

Notes

1 Jesús J. Sánchez-Barricarte is at the Department of Social Analysis, Carlos III University of Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 Getafe (Madrid), Spain. E-mail: [email protected]

2 Funding: this work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under Grant CSO2012-31206; and Autonomous Community of Madrid under Grant H2015/HUM-3321.

3 The author would like to express his gratitude for the helpful comments made by Professors Antonio Moreno-Almárcegui and Juan M Iranzo-Amatriáin on a previous version of this paper and for the well-informed contributions by the three anonymous referees who helped improve this paper considerably.