In 1953, many poor countries had not yet approached the demographic transition. Accordingly, income generally had a positive impact on fertility in poor countries, while it has a negative impact today. Easterlin´s supply-demand framework offers an explanation for this nonlinearity by...

This paper studies the evolution of deliberate fertility control in fourteen historic German villages between 1700 and 1900. The fertility response to infant and child mortality and exogenous fluctuations in rye price are used as measures of the existence and extent of deliberate non-parity...

According to the classic demographic transition theory, mortality change was the key factor triggering the decline of fertility. In a recent paper Reher and Sanz-Gimeno studied the mechanisms which played a role in this process with individual longitudinal data for the Spanish town of Aranjuez....

This is a study of how the synergisms between cultural and structural factors, which played a major role during the historical fertility and nuptiality transition (first demographic transition or FDT), have continued to condition demographic innovations connected to the “second demographic...

The single most used demographic measure to describe population health is life expectancy at birth, but life expectancies at ages other than zero are also used in the study of human longevity. Our intuition tells us that the longest life expectancy is that of a newborn. However, historically,...

It has been argued in sociology, economics, and evolutionary anthropology that family size limitation enhances the intergenerational upward mobility chances in modernized societies. If parents have a large flock, family resources get diluted and intergenerational mobility is bound to head...