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  • Title: [Results, dilemmas, and suggestions concerning the demographic transition theory: causes of the decline of fertility in the nineteenth century].
    Author: Diez Medrano J.
    Journal: Bol Asoc Demogr Hist; 1985 Nov; 3(3):4-20. PubMed ID: 12314129.
    Abstract:
    This article discusses results of recent research on the fertility transition and some weak points in current knowledge whose further study could help orient research on Spain's fertility transition. The only completely valid conclusion to date on the demographic transition is that fertility and mortality are high in traditional societies and low in industrialized societies. It is clear that the demographic transition and modernization are inseparable, but the causal mechanisms producing the demographic changes remain unclear. The theory of demographic transition initially accorded great weight to the dual processes of urbanization and industrialization as causes of fertility decline, but the very early onset of the transition in France and the occurrence of fertility decline among peasants in Hungary constitute exceptions to the rule. The discovery by the Princeton group of researchers that there was no strong association between urbanization-industrialization and fertility decline in the European provinces they studied cast further doubt on the explanatory power of socioeconomic explanations. Recourse to cultural factors has been made in recent years, but few variables have been operationalized except language, religion, and political attitudes, and the weight of such variables has been found to have varied. Ideologic factors related to the crumbling of barriers to social mobility, the primacy of the individual, the importance attributed to education, and similar factors have been adduced to explain the transition. The diffusion of basic contraceptive knowledge or of the idea that family size is amenable to control has recently been advanced as a factor explaining fertility declines, but little empirical evidence is offered in support except that referring to the influence of family planning programs in developing countries, and the relevance of such data to earlier fertility transitions remains questionable. Demographic variables such as delayed age at marriage or infant mortality do not seem to have been universally significant. It is likely that the early declines of fertility represented both an adjustment to a new set of conditions and a diffusion of the idea of fertility control as a means of aspiring to the benefits of the industrial revolution. A microsociological focus permitting family reconstruction and deduction of individual-level characteristics, greater recourse to the methodologies of neighboring disciplines such as history, and very careful use of comparisons with present-day developing societies undergoing transitions might lead to an increased explanatory power for transition theory. Above all, the theoretical foundations of work in the area should be carefully formulated in order that progress in the area may continue.
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