6. The demographic transition—centrepiece of demography

2018 ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Sarah Harper
Keyword(s):  
High Mortality ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Stable State ◽  
Causal Models ◽  
Transition Theory ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
The South ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

The demographic transition is regarded as a centrepiece of demography. It is the series of changes that occur as countries evolve from a stable state of high mortality and high fertility to one of low mortality and low fertility, but its timing and drivers are strongly debated. ‘The demographic transition—centrepiece of demography’ explains that demographic transition theory can be divided into three broad components: first, the changes over time in mortality and fertility, based on clear data and therefore generally uncontested; second, and the most controversial, the construction of causal models to explain the timing, pace, and drivers of these changes; and third, the attempt to predict future changes especially for countries of the South.

Changing Families as European Societies Age

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH HARPER
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
High Mortality ◽  
Life Transitions ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Family Transitions ◽  
Demographic Ageing ◽  
The Impact

The trends towards falling fertility and mortality and increasing longevity, which have led to the demographic ageing of all Western industrialized societies, have not occurred in isolation. More specifically, we are also seeing a combination of forces which are resulting in the ageing of some life-transitions. While public and legal institutions may be lowering the age threshold into full legal adulthood, individuals themselves are choosing to delay many of those transitions which demonstrate a commitment to full adulthood. This shift from a high-mortality/high-fertility society to a low-mortality/low-fertility society and the ageing of family transitions within these societies have significant implications for both family structure and kinship roles. Drawing on recent demographic figures for the European Union, this paper highlights the impact of these main trends on individuals and families.

scholarly journals Population dynamics and economic development

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Andrea Caravaggio ◽  
Luca Gori ◽  
Mauro Sodini
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Continuous Time ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Optimal Growth ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Income Per Capita ◽  
Time Optimal ◽  
Per Capita

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This research develops a continuous-time optimal growth model that accounts for population dynamics resembling the historical pattern of the demographic transition. The Ramsey model then becomes able to generate multiple determinate or indeterminate stationary equilibria and explain the process of the transition from a state with high fertility and low income per capita to a state with low fertility and high income per capita. The article also investigates the emergence of damped or persistent cyclical dynamics.</p>

The Beneficial Learning Effects of Combining a Hypothesis-Testing Mindset with a Causal Model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Huo ◽  
Khim Kelly ◽  
Alan Webb
Keyword(s):  
Hypothesis Testing ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Causal Model ◽  
Causal Models ◽  
Learning Effects ◽  
Strategic Objectives ◽  
Changing Environments ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Over Time

Firms often use causal models to align decision-making with strategic objectives. However, firms often operate in changing environments such that an accurate causal model can become inaccurate. Prior research has not examined the consequences a change in the accuracy of causal models may have for managerial learning. Using an experiment, we predict and find that providing an accurate causal model positively affects managerial learning, and this positive effect is not reduced by encouraging a hypothesis-testing mindset (HTM). However, when the model subsequently becomes inaccurate, we predict and observe that providing a causal model alone negatively affects managerial learning, although this effect is partially mitigated by additionally encouraging a HTM. Our results can inform designers of control systems about the potential implications of providing a causal model when its accuracy changes over time and demonstrate how simple encouragement of a HTM moderates the effects of providing a causal model.

The Demographic Transition

1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansley J. Coale
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Slow Growth ◽  
Reproductive Behaviour ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Industrial State ◽  
Simple Link

Demographic transition is a set of changes in reproductive behaviour that are experienced as a society is transformed from a traditional pre-industrial state to a highly developed, modernized structure. The transformation is the substitution of slow growth achieved with low fertility and mortality for slow growth maintained with relatively high fertility and mortality rates. Contrary to early descriptions of the transition, fertility in pre-modem societies was well below the maximum that might be attained. However, it was kept at moderate levels by customs (such as late marriage or prolonged breast-feeding) not related to the number of children already born. Fertility has been reduced during the demographic transition by the adoption of contraception as a deliberate means of avoiding additional births. An extensive study of the transition in Europe shows the absence of a simple link of fertility with education, proportion urban, infant mortality and other aspects of development. It also suggests the importance of such cultural factors as common customs associated with a common language, and the strength of religious traditions. Sufficient modernization nevertheless seems always to bring the transition to low fertility and mortality.

scholarly journals Two centuries of demographic change in Canada

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Barry Edmonston
Keyword(s):  
Age Structure ◽  
Demographic Change ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Vital Rates ◽  
Demographic Processes ◽  
Negative Population

One key aspect of the demographic transition—the shift from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility is a major change in the population’s age distribution from a pyramid-shaped young age structure to a pillar-shaped old age structure. This paper discusses two demographic processes affected by changes in age structure. First, there are effects on vital rates, with important differences in the observed crude rates and the implied intrinsic vital rates. Second, changes in age structure influence population momentum. More recently, demographers have noted that older age distributions associated with fertility levels below replacement have negative population momentum. Although the demographic transition has been well-described for many countries, demographers have seldom analyzed intrinsic vital rates and population momentum over time, which are dynamic processes affected by changes in the population age structure and which, in turn, influence future changes in population growth and size. This paper uses new data and methods to analyze intrinsic vital rates and population momentum across two centuries of demographic change in Canada 

scholarly journals What if fertility decline is not permanent? The need for an evolutionarily informed approach to understanding low fertility

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1692) ◽  
pp. 20150157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Burger ◽  
John P. DeLong
Keyword(s):  
Fertility Decline ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Transition Theory ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Demographic Traits ◽  
The Future ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Evolutionary Point

‘Demographic transition theory’ assumes that fertility decline is irreversible. This commonly held assumption is based on observations of recent and historical reductions in fertility that accompany modernization and declining mortality. The irreversibility assumption, however, is highly suspect from an evolutionary point of view, because demographic traits are at least partially influenced by genetics and are responsive to social and ecological conditions. Nonetheless, an inevitable shift from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility is used as a guiding framework for projecting human population sizes into the future. This paper reviews some theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the assumption of irreversibility is ill-founded, at least without considerable development in theory that incorporates evolutionary and ecological processes. We offer general propositions for how fertility could increase in the future, including natural selection on high fertility variants, the difficulty of maintaining universal norms and preferences in a large, diverse and economically differentiated population, and the escalating resource demands of modernization.

scholarly journals The Reproductive Revolution

2009 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
John MacInnes ◽  
Julio Pérez Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Change ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Transition Theory ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Time

We suggest that a third revolution alongside the better known economic and political ones has been vital to the rise of modernity: the reproductive revolution, comprising a historically unrepeatable shift in the efficiency of human reproduction which for the first time brought demographic security. As well as highlighting the contribution of demographic change to the rise of modernity and addressing the limitations of orthodox theories of the demographic transition, the concept of the reproductive revolution offers a better way to integrate sociology and demography. The former has tended to pay insufficient heed to sexual reproduction, individual mortality and the generational replacement of population, while the latter has undervalued its own distinctive theoretical contribution, portraying demographic change as the effect of causes lying elsewhere. We outline a theory of the reproductive revolution, review some relevant supporting empirical evidence and briefly discuss its implications both for demographic transition theory itself, and for a range of key social changes that we suggest it made possible: the decline of patriarchy and feminisation of the public sphere, the deregulation and privatisation of sexuality, family change, the rise of identity, ‘low’ fertility and ‘population ageing’.

scholarly journals DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES IN MALAYSIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanan Elsawahli ◽  
Faizah Ahmad ◽  
Azlan Shah Ali
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Successful Aging ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Development Goals

As a developing country, Malaysia is undergoing a demographic transition from a high fertility and mortality rural society towards an industrialised society with low fertility and mortality rates. This transition involved an increased growth rate of elderly population. The number of elderly has risen from 1.4 million in 2000 to 2.1 million in 2010 and is projected to be 3.4 million by 2020. A population aging needs to accumulate assets in order to achieve sustainable development goals. This represents the main challenge to planners and policy makers in terms of designing aged-friendly neighbourhoods to meet the elderly needs. This paper aims to review the population aging trends and policy framework available for the elderly in Malaysia. The paper further discusses the sustainable neighbourhoods related to active aging. The paper concludes by identifying fundamental gaps in both knowledge and policy associated with planning for the aging population and successful aging.

scholarly journals Heterogeneity in ‘High Fertility’ Societies. Insights From Compositional Demography

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 106-111
Author(s):  
Hilde Bras
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Reproductive Behaviors ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Reproductive Management ◽  
And Cluster Analysis ◽  
Different Characteristics

Demographic transition theory has been conducive to a rather dichotomous view of global fertility: traditional versus modern, high versus low fertility. The knowledge that high fertility could be achieved by subpopulations with different characteristics and reproductive behaviors somehow vanished from (historical) demographers' attention. This study unpacks heterogeneity in a 'high fertility' society, i.e. 19th-century Zeeland, the Netherlands. Sequence and cluster analysis were employed to distinguish groups with disparate reproductive trajectories with data from Genlias/LINKS including 15,014 full birth histories and 87,204 observed live births over the period 1811–1911. Multilevel binomial logistic regression models of membership of the two discerned high fertility subgroups were then estimated. The 'Traditional 1' subpopulation, with 10.5 children per woman on average, was composed of skilled, unskilled, and farm workers living in rural areas. Couples married early and were characterized by large spousal age gaps. The 'Traditional 2' subpopulation had on average 7.2 children per woman, more often lived in towns, married significantly later, and had more equal gender relations. Compositional demography, revealing subpopulations with divergent cultures of marital self-restraint and reproductive management, not only nuances previous (historical) demographic findings, but may well offer more tools to develop family planning and reproductive health policies than the demographic transition model does.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES IN MALAYSIA

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanan Elsawahli ◽  
Faizah Ahmad ◽  
Azlan Shah Ali
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Successful Aging ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Development Goals

As a developing country, Malaysia is undergoing a demographic transition from a high fertility and mortality rural society towards an industrialised society with low fertility and mortality rates. This transition involved an increased growth rate of elderly population. The number of elderly has risen from 1.4 million in 2000 to 2.1 million in 2010 and is projected to be 3.4 million by 2020. A population aging needs to accumulate assets in order to achieve sustainable development goals. This represents the main challenge to planners and policy makers in terms of designing aged-friendly neighbourhoods to meet the elderly needs. This paper aims to review the population aging trends and policy framework available for the elderly in Malaysia. The paper further discusses the sustainable neighbourhoods related to active aging. The paper concludes by identifying fundamental gaps in both knowledge and policy associated with planning for the aging population and successful aging.

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