Italy’s Path to Very Low Fertility: The Adequacy of Economic and Second Demographic Transition Theories

Italy’s Path to Very Low Fertility: The Adequacy of Economic and Second Demographic Transition Theories

The deep drop of the fertility rate in Italy to among the lowest in the world challenges contemporary theories of childbearing and family building. Among high-income countries, Italy was presumed to have characteristics of family values and female labor force participation that would favor higher fertility than its European neighbors to the north. We test competing economic and cultural explana...

The Contraceptive Revolution and the Second Demographic Transition: An Economic Model of Sex, Fertility, and Marriage

Fertility, Human Capital, and Economic Growth over the Demographic Transition

Do low fertility and population aging lead to economic decline if couples have fewer children, but invest more in each child? By addressing this question, this article extends previous work in which the authors show that population aging leads to an increased demand for wealth that can, under some conditions, lead to increased capital per worker and higher per capita consumption. This article i...

Demographic Transition Revisited: Low Fertility, Socioeconomic Development, and Gender Equity

While new empirical findings and theoretical frameworks provide insight into the interrelations between socioeconomic development, gender equity, and low fertility, puzzling exceptions and outliers in these findings call for a more all-encompassing framework to understand the inter-play between these processes. We argue that the pace and onset of development are two important factors to be cons...

Nonmarital fertility in Russia: Second Demographic Transition or Low Human Capital