When Population Studies was founded in 1946 a main preoccupation of demographers and of the public was the prospective decline of the British population, and the falling off of its quality because on the average a poor family had more children than a better-off one. The fall in the birth rate, required both for development and for protection of the environment, is spreading from the original industrialized countries of Europe and America to Asia, somewhat more slowly to Latin America, slowest of all to Africa. The Demographic Transition Demography is a science short on theory, rich in quantification. The cause of the transition has been sought in the reduction of the death rate by controlling epidemic and contagious diseases. Then, with modernization, children became more costly.
Cultural changes weaken the importance of children.
The increasing empowerment of women to make their own reproductive decisions leads to smaller families. Thus there is a change in values, emphasizing the quality of children rather than their quantity. In short, the fertility transition is becoming universal phenomenon, in which every country may be placed on a continuum of progress in the transition. This paper reviews half a century of research into the determinants of fertility. It is argued that the quest for the determinants of fertility behaviour and change during that period can best be interpreted as the development of a series of sub-narratives from different disciplinary perspectives and orientations.