The Demographic Transition: Causes and Consequences

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The Demographic Transition: Causes and Consequences

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The Demographic Transition: Causes and Consequences

Oded Galor¹, Oded Galor²•Institutions (2)

Brown University¹, Economic Policy Institute²

01 May 2011-Social Science Research Network-

TL;DR: The analysis suggests that the rise in the demand for human capital in the process of development was the main trigger for the decline in fertility and the transition to modern growth.

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Abstract: This paper develops the theoretical foundations and the testable implications of the various mechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition. Moreover, it examines the empirical validity of each of the theories and their significance for the understanding of the transition from stagnation to growth. The analysis suggests that the rise in the demand for human capital in the process of development was the main trigger for the decline in fertility and the transition to modern growth

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Citations

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Journal Article•DOI•

Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries.

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Alexander Gerschenkron

01 Dec 1961-Journal of the American Statistical Association

352 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Diversity and divergence: the dynamic burden of poor maternal health

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Wendy J. Graham¹, Wendy J. Graham², Susannah Woodd², Peter Byass³, Peter Byass⁴, Veronique Filippi², Giorgia Gon², Sandra Virgo², Doris Chou⁵, Sennen Hounton⁶, Rafael Lozano⁷, Robert Clive Pattinson⁸, Susheela Singh⁹ - Show less +9 more•Institutions (9)

University of Aberdeen¹, University of London², Umeå Centre for Global Health Research³, University of the Witwatersrand⁴, World Health Organization⁵, United Nations Population Fund⁶, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation⁷, South African Medical Research Council⁸, Guttmacher Institute⁹

29 Oct 2016-The Lancet

TL;DR: This Series paper adopts primarily a numerical lens to illuminate patterns and trends in outcomes, but recognises that understanding of poor maternal health also warrants other perspectives, such as human rights.

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205 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Demography, urbanization and development: Rural push, urban pull and … urban push?

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Remi Jedwab¹, Luc Christiaensen², Marina Gindelsky¹•Institutions (2)

George Washington University¹, World Bank²

01 Mar 2017-Journal of Urban Economics

TL;DR: This article argued that a non-negligible part of developing countries' rapid urban growth and urbanization may also be linked to demographic factors, such as rapid internal urban population growth, or an urban push.

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184 citations

Book Chapter•DOI•

Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective

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Sheilagh Ogilvie¹, A. W. Carus¹•Institutions (1)

University of Cambridge¹

01 Jan 2014-Research Papers in Economics

TL;DR: The authors surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature, showing that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favorable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth.

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Abstract: This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; that parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favorable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth. Economic history has been used to support both the centrality and the irrelevance of secure property rights to growth, but the reason for this is conceptual vagueness. Secure property rights require much more careful analysis, distinguishing between rights of ownership, use, and transfer, and between generalized and particularized variants. Similar careful analysis would, we argue, clarify the growth effects of other institutions, including contract-enforcement mechanisms, guilds, communities, serfdom, and the family. Greater precision concerning institutional effects on growth can be achieved by developing sharper criteria of application for conventional institutional labels, endowing institutions with a scale of intensity or degree, and recognizing that the effects of each institution depend on its relationship with other components of the wider institutional system.

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162 citations

Development goals in an era of demographic change

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Philip Schellekens, Kaushik Basu, Indermit S. Gill, M. Ayhan Kose, S. Amer Ahmed, Vandana Chandra, Marcio José Vargas da Cruz, Allen Curtis K. Dennis, Christian Eigen-Zucchi, Michele Gragnolati, Hans Lofgren, Maryla Maliszew, Bryce Quillin, Kenneth Simler, Mark Edgar Felsenthal, Graeme B. Littler, Bruce Clifford Ross Larson, Dana Lauren Vorisek, Lynge Nielsen, Tam Bayoumi, Rupa Duttagupta, Sean Nolan - Show less +18 more

01 Jan 2015

TL;DR: In this paper, the progress made on sustainable poverty reduction and shared prosperity, as well as the policies that are needed to make further progress, are discussed, along with the unfinished agenda left for the SDGs.

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Abstract: Chapter one examines the progress made on sustainable poverty reduction and shared prosperity, as well as the policies that are needed to make further progress. With 2015 being a watershed year for global development goals, Chapter two reviews the development successes during the MDG period and examines the unfinished agenda left for the SDGs. Chapter three assesses the macroeconomic performance over the MDG period, provides the near- and medium-term outlook, and examines what the world might be like in 2030. Part two, the thematic part, examines how demographic change can be tilted in favor of the development goals. Chapter four characterizes demographic change at the global, regional, and country level. It also examines the drivers of demographic change that have shaped the diversity of demographic patterns and trends. Chapter five examines how demography affects development. It develops a new global typology that ties demographic change to development potential and analyzes the various pathways through which demographic change affects the prosperity of nations. Chapter six analyzes how policies can leverage demographic change in support of the development goals. It examines policy opportunities at both the country and the global level.

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155 citations

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References

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Book•

A Treatise on the Family

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Gary S. Becker

01 Jan 1981

TL;DR: The Enlarged Edition as mentioned in this paper provides an overview of the evolution of the family and the state Bibliography Index. But it does not discuss the relationship between fertility and the division of labor in families.

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Abstract: Preface to the Enlarged Edition Introduction 1. Single-Person Households 2. Division of Labor in Households and Families Supplement: Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor 3. Polygamy and Monogamy in Marriage Markets 4. Assortative Mating in Marriage Markets 5. The Demand for Children Supplement: A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility 6. Family Background and the Opportunities of Children 7. Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility Supplement: Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families 8. Altruism in the Family 9. Families in Nonhuman Species 10. Imperfect Information, Marriage, and Divorce 11. The Evolution of the Family Supplement: The Family and the State Bibliography Index

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9,096 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Does Trade Cause Growth

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Jeffrey A. Frankel¹, David H. Romer•Institutions (1)

Harvard University¹

01 Jun 1999-The American Economic Review

TL;DR: This paper found that trade has a quantitatively large and robust, though only moderately statistically significant, positive effect on income and that countries' geographic characteristics have important effects on trade, and are plausibly uncorrelated with other determinants of income.

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Abstract: Examining the correlation between trade and income cannot identify the direction of causation between the two. Countries’ geographic characteristics, however, have important effects on trade, and are plausibly uncorrelated with other determinants of income. This paper therefore constructs measures of the geographic component of countries’ trade, and uses those measures to obtain instrumental variables estimates of the effect of trade on income. The results provide no evidence that ordinary least-squares estimates overstate the effects of trade. Further, they suggest that trade has a quantitatively large and robust, though only moderately statistically significant, positive effect on income. (JEL F43, 040)

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5,537 citations

"The Demographic Transition: Causes ..." refers background or methods in this paper

...The choice of this time period reects the desirability of the use of the Frankel and Romer (1999) instrument for a countrys intrinsic propensity to trade in 1985, so as to overcome the potential existence of omitted variables, measurement errors, and reverse causality from fertility and human...
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...The choice of this time period re ects the desirability of the use of the Frankel and Romer (1999) instrument for a country s intrinsic propensity to trade in 1985, so as to overcome the potential existence of omitted variables, measurement errors, and reverse causality from fertility and human…...
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...2 Empirical Examination Galor and Mountford (2008) use cross-country regression analysis to examine empirically the hypothesis that the e¤ect of international trade on the demand for human capital induces a rise in fertility and a decline in human capital formation in non-industrial economies, and a decline in fertility and a rise in human capital formation in industrialized economies....
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Journal Article•DOI•

A Treatise on the Family.

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Debra Friedman, Gary S. Becker

01 Nov 1982-Contemporary Sociology

5,474 citations

Book•

The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective

[...]

Angus Maddison

01 May 2001

2,576 citations

"The Demographic Transition: Causes ..." refers background in this paper

...The introduction of costs associated with nonsurviving children, or risk aversion, would not a¤ect the qualitative features of the theory. transition, England and the Netherlands were the richest countries in Western Europe, enjoying GDP per capita of $3,190 and $2,760, respectively (Maddison, 2001).6 In contrast, Germany and France, which experienced the onset of a decline in fertility in the same decade as England and the Netherlands, had in 1870 a signi cantly smaller GDP per capita of $1,840 and $1,880 respectively (i.e., only about 60% of the level in England)....
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...Importantly, cross-sectional evidence from France, Germany, and England supports the hypothesis that the rise in human capital formation has had an adverse e¤ect on fertility....
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...Then, the optimal number of children and their quality are independent of the parental level of income. during this period was 1.3% per year ranging from 1.0% per year in the United Kingdom, 1.3% in Norway, 1.4% in Finland and France, 1.5% in Sweden, to 1.6% in Germany (Maddison, 2001)....
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...…England and the Netherlands were the richest countries in Western Europe, enjoying GDP per capita of $3,190 and $2,760, respectively (Maddison, 2001).6 In contrast, Germany and France, which experienced the onset of a decline in fertility in the same decade as England and the…...
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Posted Content•

An Economic Analysis of Fertility

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Gary S. Becker

01 Jan 1960-Research Papers in Economics

TL;DR: This paper analyzed family size decisions within an economic framework and found that fertility was determined primarily by two primitive variables, age at marriage and the frequency of co-operation during marriage, and the development and spread of knowledge about contraceptives during the last century greatly widened the scope of family size decision-making.

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Abstract: THE inability of demographers to predict western birth rates accurately in the postwar period has had a salutary influence on demographic research Most predictions had been based either on simple extrapolations of past trends or on extrapolations that adjusted for changes in the agesex-marital composition of the population Socio-economic considerations are entirely absent from the former and are primitive and largely implicit in the latter As long as even crude extrapolations continued to give fairly reliable predictions, as they did during the previous half century, there was little call for complicated analyses of the interrelation between socio-economic variables and fertility However, the sharp decline in birth rates during the thirties coupled with the sharp rise in rates during the postwar period swept away confidence in the view that future rates could be predicted from a secularly declining function of population compositions Maithus could with some justification assume that fertility was determined primarily by two primitive variables, age at marriage and the frequency of coition during marriage The development and spread of knowledge about contraceptives during the last century greatly widened the scope of family size decision-making, and contemporary researchers have been forced to pay greater attention to decision-making than either Maithus or the forecasters did Psychologists have tried to place these decisions within a framework suggested by psychological theory; sociologists have tried one suggested by sociological theory, but most persons would admit that neither framework has been particularly successful in organizing the information on fertility Two considerations encouraged me to analyze family size decisions within an economic framework The first is that Maithus' famous discussion was built upon a strongly economic framework; mine can be viewed as a generalization and development of his Second, although no

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2,122 citations

"The Demographic Transition: Causes ..." refers background in this paper

...In particular, Becker (1960) advanced the argument that the decline in fertility was a by-product of the rise in income and the associated rise in the opportunity cost of raising children....
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...Similarly, cross-section evidence from France and England does not lend support to the Beckerian theory. Murphy (2009) nds, based on panel data from France in the period 18761896, that income per capita had a positive e¤ect on fertility rates during Frances demographic transition, accounting for education, the gender literacy gap and mortality rates. Moreover, a quantitative analysis of the demographic transition in England, conducted by Fernández-Villaverde (2005), suggests that, in contrast to Beckerian theory, the force associated with a rise in income would have led to an increase in fertility rates, rather than toward the observed decline in fertility....
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...Becker et al. (2009) nd that education stimulated a decline in fertility in Prussia during the 19th century....
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...Similarly, Becker and Lewis (1973) postulated that the income elasticity with respect to investment in childrens education was greater than that with respect to the number of children, and hence a rise in income led to a decline in fertility along with an increase in the investment in each child....
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...Similarly, cross-section evidence from France and England does not lend support to the Beckerian theory. Murphy (2009) nds, based on panel data from France in the period 18761896, that income per capita had a positive e¤ect on fertility rates during Frances demographic transition, accounting for education, the gender literacy gap and mortality rates....
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