Urban versus rural: fertility decline in the cities and rural districts of Prussia, 1875 to 1910

Regional variations in the rural-urban fertility gradient in the global South

The study of regional trends in the rural-urban fertility gradient helps us to understand the pace of completion of the fertility transition and the geography of urban growth in the global South. We question whether the hypothesized inverted U-shaped evolution in rural excess fertility is confirmed in four developing regions, and investigate the underlying fertility dynamics by place of residence. Using multiple surveys for 60 developing countries, we analyze long-term rural and urban trends in cohort fertility. The regional comparison is controlled for the international heterogeneity in the stages attained in the fertility transition and the context of urbanization. We found a clearly inverted U-shaped trend in the rural-urban fertility gradient in Latin America, the Middle East and Northern Africa. In Asia, rural excess fertility remained limited. In sub-Saharan Africa it increased monotonically until the most recent cohorts. These differences stem from variations in the urban-to-rural diffusion of the onset of fertility transition and, in sub-Saharan Africa, from a slower pace of decline in rural areas.

Settlement size and fertility in the Nordic countries

While the variation in childbearing patterns across countries and between socio-economic groups within a country has been studied in detail, less is known about the differences in fertility patterns across settlements within a country. Using aggregate and individual-level register data, we examine fertility variation across settlements in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. We observe a significant variation in fertility level by settlement size in all four of these Nordic countries - the larger the settlement, the lower the fertility. Second, the variation in fertility level has decreased over time, but significant differences in fertility between settlements of different size persist. Third, the timing of childbearing also varies across settlements - the larger the settlement, the later the peak of fertility. Fourth, our analysis of parity-specific fertility in Sweden shows that the major socio-economic characteristics of women account for only a small portion of fertility variation across settlements.

Fertility and development: evidence from Brazil

Using microdata from the Brazilian demographic censuses of 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1991, aggregated into 518 consistently defined spatial units called microregions, we estimated fertility and mortality and constructed indicators of development and living conditions in the rural and urban areas of the microregions in each census. We then estimated cross-sectional and fixed-effects models to answer questions about the degree to which changes in these indicators are associated with changes in fertility and whether the relationship between fertility and development shifts through time. We found strong and consistent relationships between the decline in fertility and measurable changes in social and economic circumstances.

Fertility transition in a rural, Catholic population: Bavaria, 1880-1910

The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth, remains a topic of debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event. This paper uses district-level data from Bavaria to study the correlates of the decline of fertility in that German kingdom in the nineteenth century. Bavaria's fertility transition was later and less dramatic than in other parts of Germany. Our results for Bavaria indicate that the European Fertility Project was right about the role of religion and secularization, but missed an important role for the economic and structural effects stressed by economic historians.