Building on Davis (1963) and subsequent work, we propose a conceptual framework that provides a guide for the organization of empirical demographic research. Our approach is based on the notion that changes in nuptiality, fertility, and migration are not objectives in and of themselves, but means for reducing welfare gaps—defined as the gaps between actual welfare and that which could be attained with altered demographic and/or other behavior. We clarify theoretical issues concerning three levels of analysis. At the highest level, societal change leads to welfare gaps for families and/or individuals. In turn, behavioral adjustments are made to reduce these gaps. Finally, demographic responses at the community level result when large numbers of families and/or individuals adjust behavior in a particular manner. We consider and exemplify relationships among demographic and other responses in historical, agricultural contexts.
Kingsley Davis , "The Theory of Change and Response in Modern Demographic History," Population Index29, no.4 (1963): 345-66.
2.
Wilbert E.Moore, Social Change (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1963).
3.
See, for example, Dov Friedlander, "Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure: Population Processes in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century," Demography 20, no. 3 (1983): 249-72. See also William D. Mosher, "Demographic Responses and Demographic Transitions: A Case Study of Sweden," Demography 17, no. 4 (1980): 395-412; Michael Anderson and Donald J. Morse, "High Fertility, High Emigration, Low Nuptiality: Adjustment Processes in Scotland's Demographic Experience, 1861-1914, Part I", Population Studies 47, no. 1 (1993): 5-25; Isabel T. de Oliveira, "Portuguese Fertility Transition and the Multiple Response System," Journal of Family History 31, no. 4 (2006): 413-21.
4.
Phyllis Moen and Elaine Wethington, "The Concept of Family Adaptive Strategies ," Annual Review of Sociology18 (1992): 233-51.
5.
Friedlander, "Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure"; Mosher, "Demographic Responses and Demographic Transitions"; Anderson and Morse, "High Fertility"; de Oliveira, "Portuguese Fertility Transition."
6.
Moen and Wethington, "The Concept of Family Adaptive Strategies"
7.
See, for example, E. J. T. Collins, "Harvest Technology and Labour Supply in Britain, 1790-1870," Economic History Review 22 (1969): 453-73. See also F. M. L. Thompson, "The Second Agricultural Revolution," Economic History Review 21 (1968): 62-77 and P. Svensson, "Peasants and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Transformation of Sweden," Social Science History 30, no. 3 (2006): 387-429.
8.
Svensson, "Peasants and Entrepreneurship"
9.
Moen and Wethington, "The Concept of Family Adaptive Strategies"
10.
See Davis, "The Theory of Change and Response in Modern Demographic History" and Richard M. Smith, "Fertility, Economy and Household Formation in England Over Three Centuries," Population and Development Review 7, no. 4 (1981): 595-622.
11.
Charles Tilly, "The Historical Study of Vital Processes," in Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 3-56.
12.
John Hajnal, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective," in Population in History, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley ( London: Edward Arnold, 1965), 101-43.
13.
See, for example, Ron Lesthaeghe and Chris Wilson, "Modes of Production, Secularization, and the Pace of Fertility Decline in Western Europe, 1870-1930 " in The Decline of Fertility in Europe, ed. Ansley J. Coale and Susan Watkins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 261-92.
14.
Davis, "The Theory of Change and Response in Modern Demographic History"
15.
Friedlander, "Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure: Population Processes in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century"
16.
See Appendix A, by Y. Rinott, in Friedlander "Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure."
17.
See, for example, A.J. Coale, "Age of Entry into Marriage and the Date of the Initiation of Voluntary Birth Control," Demography29, no. 3 ( 1992): 333-41.
18.
Anderson and Morse, "High Fertility, High Emigration, Low Nuptiality"; de Oliveira "Portuguese Fertility Transition"; and Eiledh Garrett, Alice Reid, Kevin Schurer, and Simon Szreter, Changing Family Size in England and Wales: Place, Class and Demography, 1891- 1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
19.
David Levine , "Proto-industrialization and Demographic Upheaval ," in Essays on the Family and Historical Change, ed. Leslie Page Moch and Gary D. Stark (College Station, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983), 9-34.
20.
Ibid.
21.
See, for example, Andrew Hinde, "The Use of Nineteenth-Century Data to Investigate Local Migration," Local Population Studies73 (2004): 8-28.
22.
Jean Robin, Elmdon: Continuity and Change in a North-West Essex Village, 1861- 1964 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 198.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Rudolf Andorka , Population and Socio-economic Change in Peasant Societies: The Historical Record of Hungary, 1700 to Present (United Nations: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations , 1978).
25.
Martin Dribe , "Dealing with Economic Stress through Migration: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Rural Sweden," European Review of Economic History7 (2003): 271-99.
26.
Ibid, 295.
27.
Tommy Bengtsson and Martin Dribe, "Deliberate Control in a Natural Fertility Population: Southern Sweden, 1766-1864," Demography43, no. 4 (2006): 727-46.
28.
Friedlander, "Demographic Responses and Socioeconomic Structure."
29.
See Robert E. Kennedy, Jr., The Irish: Emigration, Marriage and Fertility 1841-1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) and Timothy W. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
30.
Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 198.
31.
See, for example, Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish.
32.
Dov Friedlander and R.J. Roshier, "A Study of Internal Migration in England and Wales Part II Recent Internal Migrants-Their Movements and Characteristics ," Population Studies20 (1966): 45-59.
33.
Hill Kulu and Nadja Milewski, "Family Change and Migration in the Life Course: An Introduction," Demographic Research17 (2007): 567-90.
