The Global Fertility Transition: The Need for a Unifying Theory

Abstract

This address to the 1997 IUSSP General Conference urges the need to regard the global fertility transition as a single process explained by a unified fertility transition theory. The argument is that a global fertility transition was inevitable and that demographic pressure was intertwined with ideas, ideologies, and organized assistance both in nineteenth-century Europe and in the developing countries of the second half of the twentieth century. Once fertility change began, it was certain that it would be explained, championed, and assisted. These actions accelerated the change in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.