A time when death rates are as low as they are likely to go, while fertility may continue to decline to the point that the population might eventually decline in numbers. The idea that in premodern times human society was generally governed by tradition and that massive economic changes wrought by industrialization forced societies to alter traditional institutions. Traditional societies fertility and mortality are high. This provided the vehicle for the demographic transition to move from a mere description of events to a demographic perspective. Birth rates declined due to industrialization and urban life, which weakened the pressure for large families.
Compulsory education lowers the value of children, also.
The modern field of population studies came about largely to encourage and inspire deeper insight into the causes of changes in fertility, mortality and migration, age, and sex structure, and population characteristics and distribution. Believed socialism would undercut desire for upward social mobility thus stimulate birth rate Durkheim French 19 th C. sociologist Based theory on consequences of population growth.