Mortality decline and reproductive change during the Dutch demographic transition: Revisiting a traditional debate with new data

BACKGROUND According to classic demographic transition theory, mortality change is the key factor that triggers a decline in fertility. Research on this topic has mostly relied on aggregate or time series data. Since fertility is based on the joint decisions of couples when confronted with specific fertility-childhood mortality outcomes, a focus on the experiences of individual couples is needed. Recently, Reher and Sanz-Gimeno used this approach to analyze individual longitudinal data for the Spanish town of Aranjuez. OBJECTIVE We investigate whether, in a country and in populations character... Mehr ...