Demographic Transition Theory
Abstract
Demography is a science short on theory, rich in quantification. Nevertheless, demography has produced one of the best documented generalizations in the social sciences: the demographic transition. What is the demographic transition? Stripped to its essentials it is the theory that societies progress from a pre-modern regime of high fertility and high mortality to a post-modern regime of low fertility and low mortality. The cause of the transition has been sought in the reduction of the death rate by controlling epidemic and contagious diseases. Then, with modernization, children become more costly. Cultural changes weaken the importance of children. The increasing empowerment of women to make their own reproductive decisions leads to smaller families. Thus there is a change in values, emphasizing the quality of children rather than their quantity. In short, the fertility transition is becoming universal phenomenon, in which every country may be placed on a continuum of progress in the transition.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The crucial event in a demographic transition is the onset of a declining trend in the fertility time path.
“According to demographers (e.g., Chesnais, 1992; Kirk, 1996) and economists (e.g., Galor and Weil, 2000; Cervellati and Sunde, 2015), the crucial event in a demographic transition is the onset of a declining trend in the fertility time path.”
From Fertility Transitions in Developing Countries: Convergence, Timing, and Causes (2019) · cites this paper as Kirk, 1996
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Vollset, S. E., Goren, E., Yuan, C.-W., Cao, J., Smith, A. E., Hsiao, T., Bisignano, C., Azhar, G. S., Castro, E., Chalek, J., et al. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30677-2 · Cited by 1,506 · see citing works
The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth
Bowman, D. M. J. S., Balch, J., Artaxo, P., Bond, W. J., Cochrane, M. A., D’Antonio, C. M., DeFries, R., Johnston, F. H., Keeley, J. E., Krawchuk, M. A., et al. (2011) · Journal of Biogeography · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2011.02595.x · Cited by 1,230 · see citing works
Bhattacharjee, N. V., Schumacher, A. E., Aali, A., Abate, Y. H., Abbasgholizadeh, R., Abbasian, M., Abbasi-Kangevari, M., Abbastabar, H., Abd ElHafeez, S., Abd-Elsalam, S., et al. (2024) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(24)00550-6 · Cited by 629 · see citing works
Obstetric transition: the pathway towards ending preventable maternal deaths
Souza, J., Tunçalp, Ö., Vogel, J., Bohren, M., Widmer, M., Oladapo, O., Say, L., Gülmezoglu, A., & Temmerman, M. (2014) · BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology · doi:10.1111/1471-0528.12735 · Cited by 303 · see citing works
Dynamics of life expectancy and life span equality
Aburto, J. M., Villavicencio, F., Basellini, U., Kjærgaard, S., & Vaupel, J. W. (2020) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1915884117 · Cited by 254 · see citing works
The demographic transition revisited as a global process
Reher, D. S. (2004) · Population, Space and Place · doi:10.1002/psp.313 · Cited by 247 · see citing works
Cohort Reproductive Patterns in Low‐Fertility Countries
Frejka, T., & Calot, G. (2001) · Population and Development Review · doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2001.00103.x · Cited by 193 · see citing works
The cultural evolution of fertility decline
Colleran, H. (2016) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0152 · Cited by 124 · see citing works
Community-level education accelerates the cultural evolution of fertility decline
Colleran, H., Jasienska, G., Nenko, I., Galbarczyk, A., & Mace, R. (2014) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2732 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
Variation in wealth and educational drivers of fertility decline across 45 countries
Colleran, H., & Snopkowski, K. (2018) · Population Ecology · doi:10.1007/s10144-018-0626-5 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Hedges, S., Sear, R., Todd, J., Urassa, M., & Lawson, D. W. (2018) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/699880 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
The Fertility Transition Revisited: A Cohort Perspective
Frejka, T. (2017) · Comparative Population Studies · doi:10.12765/cpos-2017-09 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Fertility Transitions in Developing Countries: Convergence, Timing, and Causes
Papagni, E. (2019) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3522996 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kirk, D.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kirk, Dudley
- Venue
- Population Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1996-11
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 361-387
- ISSN
- 0032-4728 (ISSN-L)
- 1477-4747
- OpenAlex
- W2010887308
- Cited by
- 1,004
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 52 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 71 · 2021: 62 · 2020: 60 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 52 · 2016: 52 · 2015: 41 · 2014: 42 · 2013: 30 · 2012: 39
- FWCI
- 16.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Population Studies (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
- Social Sciences › Demography › Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Keywords
- demographic transition, fertility decline, mortality decline, modernization, women's reproductive choices, cost of children, cultural change, epidemic control
- MeSH terms
- Demography, Fertility, Humans, Mortality, Population Dynamics, History, 20th Century, History, Modern 1601-
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
