Is the Second Demographic Transition a useful research concept: Questions and answers

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Temporarily New: On Low Fertility and the Prospect of Pro-natal Policies

Concern about the low levels of fertility in Europe appears to be spreading. In political circles voices advocating the design and implementation of pro-natal policies are growing louder. The traditional fear of population decline is refuelled in numerous conference papers and at meetings specifically set up to let policymakers meet demographic experts. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion by arguing that just as in the 1930s, and in the early 1970s when fertility first dropped below replacement level, expressed concerns do not necessarily lead to pro-natal policies. After a brief discussion of the raisons d’êtres of governments, and of the purposes and types of population policies, a series of propositions is presented that make it reasonable, at the very least understandable, that democratically elected governments act with great prudence in such matters. Their basic policy goals are not endangered and they are faced with other more serious priorities. Europe’s past has mainly yielded lamentable examples, the position of national administrations vis-à-vis their population has changed so that fertility is largely beyond governmental control, and it is probably wrong to assume that the common difference between mean desired family size and completed family size is essentially due to the lack of support for families. It is concluded that concern about numbers may be a temporary phenomenon and that in many ways it makes more sense for governments to invest heavily in the children that are being born.

American political affiliation, 2003–43: a cohort component projection

The recent rise and stability in American party identification has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party bases. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high Republican fertility in securing Republican growth. These concerns foreground the neglect of demography within political science. This paper addresses this omission by conducting the first ever cohort component projection of American partisan populations to 2043 based on survey and census data. A number of scenarios are modeled, but, on current trends, we predict that American partisanship will shift much less than the nation’s ethnic composition because the parties’ age structures are similar. Still, our projections find that the Democrats gain two to three percentage points from the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, though Republican fertility may redress the balance in the very long term

Postmodern fertility preferences: from changing value orientation to new behaviour

In several of the social sciences, and certainly in demography, the term postmodernism has not become part of the scientific discourse. People shy away from it, understandably find it difficult to deal with, or have the vague, intuitive notion that it is better to steer clear of such an ill-defined concept. In this paper I aim to explore whether the term ‘postmodernism’, or one of its derivatives, could usefully have a place in demographic studies and population analysis. I shall, more particularly, do so with reference to the issue of fertility preferences in developed societies