Is the Second Demographic Transition a useful research concept: Questions and answers

Abstract

Very wise men, the organisers of this debate. They do not pose a question that is virtually impossible to answer, such as:“Will you please prove that theSDTexists or does not exist”, but one that can be answered in a dispassionate and straightforward manner: “Is the Second DemographicTransition a useful research concept?”My answer is a simple and unqualified “Yes”. In my view it is really impossible to under- stand the demographic changes that have occurred in Europe, and in many other in- dustrialised countries as well, since the mid-1960s, without accepting the idea that the many and very varied changes we have observed in a whole series of demo- graphic variables are interrelated and mayin their totality be indicative of, and repre- sent, the manifestation of a change in demographic regime.