Culture and the fertility transition: Thoughts on theories of fertility decline
Mason, Karen-Oppenheim
Genus 48(3-4): 1-14
1992
ISSN/ISBN: 0016-6987 DOI: 10.2307/29789099Document Number: 414563
This paper attempts to clarify current thinking about the causes of fertility transition by noting that there is implicitly more than one question that can be asked under this rubric, with the answer to different questions not necessarily being the same; that there are distracting confusions involving such terms as "cultural", "ideational", "diffusion", and "fertility regulation" in recent discussions of the causes of the fertility transition; and that much of the evidence marshalled to support the ideational/diffusion/fertility regulation view of fertility is ambiguous.