Stages of the demographic transition from a child’s perspective: family size, cohort size, and children’s resources

David Lam, University of Michigan
Leticia J. Marteleto, University of Michigan

This paper provides a new characterization of stages of the demographic transition, describing it from a child’s perspective. These stages describe the sequence of changes in family and cohort sizes that affect children’s resources. In Stage 1, falling mortality produces increases in surviving family size and in the size of birth cohorts. In Stage 2, falling fertility overtakes falling mortality to produce declining family size, but population momentum causes continued growth in cohort size. In Stage 3, falling fertility overtakes population momentum to produce declining cohort size. We examine several countries using this framework. Many developing countries have patterns like Brazil, which entered Stage 2 before 1970, when family size began to fall, and started Stage 3 around 1982, when the largest birth cohort was born. Other countries, like Kenya, have experienced Stage 2, but will not experience the declining cohort size of Stage 3 for at least another decade.