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Cited by 531

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 69 of the 69 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Explaining fertility transitions

Mason, Karen Oppenheim·1997·Demography

Abstract

In this essay. I suggest that the crisis in our understanding of fertility transitions is more apparent than real. Although most existing theories of fertility transition have been partially or wholly discredited, this reflects a tendency to assume that all fertility transitions share one or two causes, to ignore mortality decline as a precondition for fertility decline, to assume that pretransitional fertility is wholly governed by social constraints rather than by individual decision-making. and to test ideas on a decadal time scale. I end the essay by suggesting a perceptual. interactive approach to explaining fertility transitions that is closely allied to existing theories but focuses on conditions that lead couples to switch from postnatal to prenatal controls on family size.

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Metadata

Authors
Mason, K. O.
Venue
Demography
Published
1997-11-01
Volume
34
Issue
4
Pages
443-454
ISSN
  • 0070-3370 (ISSN-L)
  • 1533-7790
OpenAlex
W2049266804
Cited by
531
References
69
FWCI
36.60
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Explaining fertility transitions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/3038299
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Mason, K. O. (1997). Explaining fertility transitions. Demography. https://doi.org/10.2307/3038299

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.