ABSTRACT
The modern shift to “below replacement” fertility levels has been the most significant demographic development in industrial societies since the fertility transitions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These transformations reduced total fertility of 2.5–3.0 during the 1950s to low levels of 1.4–1.9 during the late 1970s and 1980s. 1 An examination of cohort marital fertility shows similar patterns. Hence, although a delay in marriage, or a shift of reproduction to later marriage durations, could have affected current total fertility in these societies, they cannot possibly provide the whole explanation. This transition to very low fertility levels has been explained by the general rise in the status of women, the large variety of substitutes for children and family in modern society, and the increasing costs of raising “quality” children (Davies 1986).
