Calvin Goldscheider - Fertility Transitions, Family Structure, And Population Policy

First published 1992 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fertility transitions, family structure, and population policy /

edited by Calvin Goldscheider

p. cm.(Brown University studies in population and development)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-8133-8535-0

1. Fertility, HumanDeveloping countries. 2. Demographic

transitionDeveloping countries. 3. FamilyDeveloping countries.

4. Developing countriesPopulation policy. I. Goldscheider,

Calvin. II. Series.

HB1108.F48 1992

304.632091724dc20

92-19

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00794-2 (hbk)

Fertility transitions in developing nations and in the historical experience of western industrialized societies have more than demographic significance. Clearly fertility is a central feature of the population system, as changes in the level of fertility affect (and are affected by) the size, composition, and structure of populations as well as the other demographic processes of mortality and migration. But its systematic study requires us to go beyond demography, since the social scientific examination of fertility emphasizes the linkages to broad societal changes, makes explicit connections to social structure, community, and social processes, and integrates the examination of reproduction in the context of family patterns.

What are the sources of these linkages and connections? How should fertility patterns be understood in the contexts of family, community, and society? What is the value of extending our analysis of reproduction beyond the population system, focusing on social rather than on individual or biological concerns? The answers to these questions rest with our theories of fertility change and the frameworks that guide our understanding of the determinants and consequences of population change. Sociological theories of fertility stress the importance of several broad complex processes that are critical for understanding demographic transitions. These processes include those associated with social, economic, and political development over time and the values that shape and are shaped by these changes; the ways resources and rewards are distributed within societies and between generations, along with the norms that rationalize the distribution and the preferences that sustain continuity and change in intergenerational patterns. The study of these processes have been among the master themes in the social sciences and inform to a large extent the sociological analysis of demographic processes.

What links development and fertility? What connects the macro processes of development, broad processes of change, and the nature of social organization (including political, economic, and cultural systems), to families and individuals within families and to the generations? Research is beginning to clarify how processes of development and distribution, of changes over time and variations among groups, translate into institutional supports and community contexts, expressed at the individual and family levels. In turn, the social scientific analysis of fertility patterns has increased our sensitivities to the complex interactions between policy and demographic change and has challenged some oversimplified notions about the role of governments and non-government organizations in addressing the goals of population change.