Long-Term Determinants of the Demographic Transition, 1870–2000

Fabrice Murtin

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2013, vol. 95, issue 2, 617-631

Abstract: This paper analyzes the long-term economic determinants of the demographic transition using a large panel of countries since 1870. A simple theoretical framework accounts for the possibly nonmonotonic variations of fertility in the course of economic development. As predicted by unified growth theory, I find that primary schooling, rather than income or health-related variables, is the most robust determinant of the fertility transition. As regards the health transition, both education and income are significant determinants of mortality rates, but education alone accounts for the bulk of their time variation over the twentieth century. Thus, education can be viewed as the main long-term determinant of the demographic transition. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: long-term economic determinants; demographic transition; fertility; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J11 J13 N30 O11 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00302 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:2:p:617-631

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().