The epidemiologic transition theory presented first by Omran [Omram. A. R. (1971) The epidemiologic transition: a theory of the epidemiology of population change, Mildbank Quarterly 49(4), 509-538] was designed to explain global trends in the dynamic relationship between epidemiological phenomena and demographic change. This paper argues that universalizing this theory only partially serves to ...

This research argues that the rapid expansion of international trade in the second phase of the industrial revolution has played a significant role in the timing of demographic transitions across countries and has thereby been a major determinant of the distribution of world population and a prime cause of the Great Divergence in income per capita across countries in the last two centuries. The...

Inspired by the historical English experience, we modify the Beckerian paradigm of fertility by incorporating costly, societal influence on contraception. Heterogeneous, generationallylinked households choose between “traditional” and “modern” contraception. The modern has a higher fixed but lower variable cost of averting childbirths. Initially the rich adopt the modern, which unleashes societ...

This paper presents an analysis of demographic transition based on the endogenous evolution of intergenerational transfers along an economy’s endogenous path of development. Two-period-lived agents belonging to overlapping generations choose optimally their desired levels of consumption and fertility, together with their desired sizes of transfers to both parents and children. Parents are more ...

This paper finds that fertility responds to productivity differently depending upon the economy’s stage of development. At low levels of development, productivity increases will increase fertility while at the more advanced stages of development, productivity increases lower fertility. During the process there may be important interaction effects between productivity and education demand. Incre...

One of the very first persons to observe an empirical and statistical link between voting outcomes and actual demographic behavior was the Austrian professor Julius Wolf (1862-1937). Wolf was professor of economics and social sciences in Zürich, and noted the remarkable correlation between the birth rates in German administrative areas (Kreize) and the voting outcomes in favor of the Socialist ...

The second demographic transition (SDT), which links ideational changes with developments, is one of the most prominent and debated theoretical frameworks in family demography. Yet, its operationalisations as composite sets measures remain u

This study examines family formation trajectories as a manifestation of the second demographic transition (SDT) in three countries, comparing and contrasting two post-socialist countries (Romania and the Russian Federation) with France as benchmark country advanced in the SDT. By examining combined partnership and fertility sequences and transcending the mainly descriptive nature of trajectory-...