Escape From Traditions Toward The Fertility Transition

We propose an economic and cultural explanation for the decline of human fertility during the demographic transition. We show that some transformations in the economic and/or cultural structure of a society can imply a fertility transition, that is to say a transition from a traditional high births rate regime to a modern low births rate regime. Furthermore the cultural structure of the population is not exogenous. It is the result of an endogenous cultural evolution mechanism. That mechanism could explain the fact that, at least for France and Great Britain, the fertility rates begun to fall before the mortality rates; it can still explain the actual persistence of high fertility rates in some Sub-Saharan African countries. Furthermore we will demonstrate that cultural heterogeneity is persistent in the long run. 1I am gratefull to Professor Bertrand Wigniolle for his help during the construction of the …rst draft of this paper. Discussions with Victor Hiller have been very helpfull too.