Agency in Fertility Decisions in Western Europe During the Demographic Transition: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

We use a set of linked reproductive histories taken from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain for the period 1871–1960 to address key issues regarding how reproductive change was linked specifically to mortality and survivorship and more generally to individual agency. Using event-history analysis, this study investigates how the propensity to have additional children was influenced by the number of surviving offspring when reproductive decisions were made. The results suggest that couples were continuously regulating their fertility to achieve reproductive goals. Families experiencing child fatalities show significant increases in the hazard of additional births. In addition, the sex composition of the surviving sibset also appears to have influenced reproductive decisions in a significant but changing way. The findings offer strong proof of active decision-making during the demographic transition and provide an important contribution to the literature on the role of mortality for reproductive change.

Historical reproductive patterns in developed countries: Aggregate-level perspective

“…The relationships between mortality and fertility and between nuptiality and mortality may have been adaptation mechanisms used by societies in historical times to regulate population growth. Many studies in historical demography using micro-level data after the Princeton Project have demonstrated replacement of deceased children with individual fertility life-course data (Bengtsson and Dribe 2006;Knodel 1988;van Bavel 2003van Bavel , 2004Reher and SanzGimeno 2007;van Bavel and Kok 2010;van Poppel et al 2012;Reher and Sandström 2015;Reher et al 2017).…”

“…Recently, Ángeles (2010), Herzer, Strulik, andVollmer (2012), andMurtin (2013), using panel data analyses covering long time periods, have shown that mortality rates are a statistically significant predictor of total fertility rates. Reher et al (2017) address the role of mortality in reproductive decision-making during the demographic transition using microdata on individual reproductive histories from Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. They found that couples were continuously regulating their fertility to achieve reproductive goals, thus providing an important contribution to the literature on the role of mortality in reproductive behavior.…”

“…As the transition set in, decisions about reproduction began to have a more individual, family-orientated background. In other words, the decision as to the number of children to have came to be influenced more by the family's circumstances than by social expectations (Reher and Sandström 2015;Reher et al 2017). …”

“…One consequence of the disappointing results obtained by the Princeton European Fertility Project was precisely that over the following decades there was a genuine explosion in studies using individual longitudinal data obtained by family reconstruction techniques (Alter 1988;Bengtsson and Dribe 2006;Knodel 1988;van Bavel 2003van Bavel , 2004Reher and Sanz-Gimeno 2007;van Bavel and Kok 2010;Reher et al 2017).…”

Population Structure in the Ialomiţa Subcarpathians

“…For example, nearly 30 years ago they spoke about the theory of the second demographic transition (SDT) -argues that the classic changes in mortality and fertility are followed by a decrease of the latter well below the replacement level (Walford and Kurek, 2016). From perspective reproductive decisions became increasingly individual and family-based, responding to concrete conditions of families more than to accepted societal norms (Reher, 2011), the demographic transition can be viewed as a key episode in the progress of human agency, central to all processes of modernization (Reher et al, 2017). The present analysis, part of an ampler study dedicated to the differences of human behavior, aims to propose the presentation of the demographic structures as a result of the geodemographic processes and as premise for the explanation of the socio-economic phenomena.…”