CityReads│Is the 2rd Demographic Transition Unfolding worldwide？
In 1986, Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa jointly formulated the second demographic transition (SDT) viewpoint. This article reviews its components, development, and applicability. The different patterns of SDT across the world show that SDT are contingent on older systems of kinship and family organization.
Ron Lesthaeghe, 2014. The second demographic transition: a concise overview of its development, PNAS, vol. 111 no. 51 18112-18115.
Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/51/18112.full.pdf
The first or “classic” demographic transition refers to the historical declines in mortality and fertility, as witnessed from the 18th century onward in several European populations and continuing at present in most developing countries. The end point of the first demographic transition (FDT) was supposed to be an older stationary population corresponding with replacement fertility (i.e., just over two children on average), zero population growth, and life expectancies higher than 70 y. Because there would be an ultimate balance between deaths and births, there would be no “demographic” need for sustained immigration.
The second demographic transition (SDT) viewpoint, jointly formulated by Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa in 1986, in contrast, sees no such equilibrium as the end point. Rather, they argue that new developments from the 1970s onward can be expected to bring about sustained subreplacement fertility, a multitude of living arrangements other than marriage, a disconnection between marriage and procreation, and no stationary population. Furthermore, populations will face declining sizes if not complemented by new migrants (i.e., “replacement migration”), and they will also be much older than envisaged by the FDT as a result of lower fertility and considerable additional gains in longevity. Migration streams will not be capable of stemming aging altogether, however, because migrants also age and lower their own fertility with time spent in receiving nations.
In the long run, mass immigration might stabilize population sizes; but this outcome would still involve the further growth of “multicultural societies.” On the whole, the SDT brings a variety of new social challenges, including those associated with further aging, the integration of immigrants, adaptation to other cultures, less stability in partnerships, more complex households, and high levels of poverty or exclusion among certain household types (e.g., single persons of all ages and lone mothers).
Having pointed out the intellectual origins of the SDT, more attention can be given to the FDT–SDT contrasts. The SDT has also been contingent on the major demographic and social shifts that shaped the initial fertility transition of the FDT. In its turn, the gradual control over reproduction liberated time for further female education, more female tertiary sector employment, etc. And these features contributed to the shaping of the “cultural revolutions” of the sixties and the seventies as well. In other words, the FDT has been a necessary precondition for the SDT. However, a “single transition” view would obscure major differences of both a demographic and social nature. An overview of these contrasts between FDT and SDT is given in Table 1.
The FDT transition in the West was characterized by a gradual weakening of the old Malthusian “preventive check” located in late and nonuniversal marriage. Ages at first marriage were lowered and proportions marrying increased during the FDT. Furthermore, the areas in which cohabitation and out-of-wedlock fertility had survived until the 20th century joined the mainstream characterized by low illegitimacy and low incidence of unmarried partnerships. The earliest ages of marriage were reached in the 1960s. Thereafter, all trends are rapidly reversed: age at first marriage increases, more single persons start living alone or cohabiting before marriage, long- term cohabitation replaces marriage,and ultimately fertility outside marriage becomes much more frequent.
A similar turn around also takes place with respect to remarriage. During the FDT,divorce (or widowhood) was often followed by remarriage, and even by continued childbearing. During the SDT, however,postmarital relationships are channeled into cohabitation or “living apart together” (LAT) relationships rather than remarriage. In parts of Central and Eastern Europe, wherethe historical Malthusian late marriage pattern did not exist, the SDT is equally characterized by a new trend towardlater marriage and more cohabitation after 1990. In addition, out-of-wed lock fertility now follows the western trend. Such features are currently developing in the western part of Southern Europe (Italy, Malta, and, especially, Portugaland Spain).
During the FDT, fertility became increasingly confined to marriage and contraception mostly affected fertility at the older ages (stopping) and at higher marriage durations. Mean ages at parenthood declined whereas childlessness among married couples remained low. There are examples of below-replacement fertility during the FDT, but they correspond to exceptional periods of deep economic crisis or war.
The SDT starts in the 1960s with a series of multifaceted revolutions. First, there was the contraceptive revolution, with the introduction of hormonal contraception and far more efficient IUDs; second, there was the sexual revolution, with declining ages at first sexual intercourse; and third, there was the sex revolution, questioning the sole breadwinner household model and the gendered division of labor that accompanied it. These three “revolutions” fit within the framework of an overall rejection of authority, the assertion of individual freedom of choice (autonomy), and an overhaul of the normative structure. The overall outcome of these shifts with respect to fertility was the postponement of childbearing: mean ages at first parenthood rise again, opportunities for childbearing are lost due to higher divorce rates, the share of childless ever-partnered women increases, and higher parity births (four or more) become rare. The net result is structural and long term below replacement fertility.
With the exception of the very early fertility decline in France and a few other small European regions, much of the FDT was an integral part of a development phase during which economic growth fostered material aspirations and improvements in material living conditions. The preoccupations of the 1860–1960 era were mainly concerned with increasing household real incomes, improving working and housing conditions, raising standards of health, improving human capital through mass education, and providing a safety net for all via the gradual construction of a social security system.
In Europe, these goals were shared and promoted by all major democratic political parties, their organizations, and by churches as well. In this endeavor, solidarity was a central concept. All such political or religious “pillars” had distinct views on the desirable evolution of the family. For religious organizations, these views were based on the holiness of matrimony in the first place, but their defense of the closely knit conjugal family also stemmed from fears that urbanization and industrialization would lead to immorality and atheism. The secular pillars, such as those promulgated by socialist or liberal parties, equally saw the family as the cornerstone of society. Both moral and material uplifting would be served best by a sharp sex-based division within the family: husbands assume their roles as devoted breadwinners and women as guardians of quality-related issues in the home (order and neatness, health, education, etc.). In other words, all religious and political factions—including the prewar Communist one— contributed to the “embourgeoisement” of the family.
The SDT, on the other hand, is founded on the rise of the higher order needs. Once the basic material preoccupations are satisfied, further income growth and educational expansion jointly lead to the articulation of more existential and expressive needs. These new needs are centered on a triad: self-actualization in formulating goals, individual autonomy in choosing means, and a claim of recognition for their realization. These issues emerge in a variety of domains, which explains why the SDT is related to such a broad array of indicators of ideational and cultural shift.
The SDT thus occurs in tandem with the growth of “post-materialism” and political or religious “depillarization,” the disengagement from civic, professional, or community-oriented associations, a critical stand vis-à-vis all forms of authority, the stress on expressive values in socialization and in work, and, of course, a quest for far more egalitarian sex relations. At the individual level, the choice for new types of households (premarital single living, cohabitation, and parenthood within cohabitation) are all linked to individualistic and nonconformist value orientations in a great variety of spheres. Furthermore, associations between household types and value orientations hold not only for Northern and Western Europe but, by now, equally for Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe.
First and foremost, many suggested that the SDT would remain a phenomenon typical only of Northwestern Europe and the overseas mainly European populations of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In other words, the SDT would not spread to Southern or Eastern Europe, and definitely not to other cultures of Latin America or Asia. therefore the SDT would describe only “Western idiosyncrasies.”
The other criticisms are directed at more specific trends that make up the overall phenomenon. For instance, the alternative view holds that the rise in premarital cohabitation and the decline in marriages would not be connected to ideational or cultural shifts, but to the rise of poverty. This alternative is the “pattern-of-disadvantage” hypothesis. Cohabitation then is and remains a lower class characteristic and is typically associated with lower education and weaker social positions or ethnic minorities.
According to this view, the crisis of the early 1990s would account for the rise in cohabitation in Russia and much of Eastern Europe and not reflect cultural shifts as in Northern and Western Europe. The pattern of disadvantage would equally fit the US experience.
The other example of a more specific criticism pertains to the continuation of below-replacement fertility. In the alternative view, sex relationships are the crucial factor to be considered, and if these relations would improve and become more egalitarian, then fertility will be restored to higher levels, and presumably to replacement level or above. In other words, the SDT low-fertility regime would merely be a passing phenomenon. Within a similar perspective, it has also been suggested that improvements in “human development” as measured by the United Nations Human Development Index, would equally lead to rising fertility in the industrialized countries.
Perhaps the most striking SDT changes with respect to partnership formation occurred in Latin America. From Mexico to Argentina, just about all regions experienced a considerable increase in proportions of couples cohabiting rather than being married. Admittedly, many regions in Latin America and the Caribbean already had a high incidence of consensual unions to start with. This cohabitation was often due to a history of slavery, to a weaker Christianization of native populations, or to geographical isolation. However, even in such regions, there were further rises in proportions cohabiting after the 1970s or 1980s. In addition, in countries with large white populations of European origin, where cohabitation had been much rarer, a genuine “cohabitation boom” has taken place. Typical examples thereof are Southern Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. Finally, Mexico also followed suit after 2000 so that, by now, the whole of the region exhibits this particular SDT feature.
How about Asia? Lesthhaeghe supported his theory of diffused SDT trends by adding data on East Asia to suggest that postmaterialist and expressive value orientations were emerging in Asia as well, especially in Japan, where he found greater evidence of premarital cohabitation, conception, and what he termed “shotgun marriages”. He argued that Japan was experiencing a second demographic transition similar to that in the West. However, the only missing ingredient so far is parenthood among cohabiting couples.
Looking across East and Southeast Asia, demographers find that, despite more than a decade of subreplacement fertility rates, marriage and parenthood remain tightly linked. Similarly, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China the linkage between marriage and parenthood and the nearly universal expectation that childbearing should occur only within marriage continue to define the parameters of marital deinstitutionalization. Ultimately, then, we disagree with Lesthaeghe’s argument that similar value orientations have spurred reduced fertility rates in Europe and Asia. Although we document similar declines in childbearing within marriage, we do not find a concomitant trend of childbearing outside of marriage that would support the conclusion that marriage and parenthood have become definitively “delinked” in these Chinese societies.
The bottom line with respect to the predictive capacity of the 1980s version of the SDT theory is that it correctly anticipated (i) the unfolding of very different patterns of partnership formation, (ii) the shift in value orientations in many spheres (ethics, politics, sex relations, education, etc.) that emerged as central driving forces in childbearing decisions, and (iii) the emergence of subreplacement fertility as a structural and lasting feature.
The main correction by now is that the changes in partnership formation and the postponement of parenthood are not necessarily as closely connected as in the West. The Asian pattern is characterized by early postponement of fertility but a slow transition from marriage to cohabitation whereas the Latin American experience points to the reverse sequence. The presence of the strong patriarchal family structure in the former is undoubtedly related to this disparity. These different developments prove yet again that current trends are not independent of deeply rooted cultural features and agelong patterns of social organization.