DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITIONand Zimbabwe all sustained fertility declines of at
least two children per woman, and some neighbor-
ing societies were also engaged in fertility transi-
tion. At the same time, many sub-Saharan coun-
tries are pre-transitional or only in the very early
stages of a transition. Of the twenty-five countries
that showed fertility increases in the PRB data,
thirteen of them were sub-Saharan nations with
TFRs of at least 5.0.
In general, countries of the Middle East and
regions of Northern Africa populated by Moslems
have also been slow to embark on the process of
fertility transition. Some (Caldwell 1976) found
this surprising since a number had experienced
substantial economic advances and invited the
benefits of Western medical technology in terms
of mortality reduction. Their resistance to fertility
transitions had been attributed partly to an alleged
Moslem emphasis on the subordinate role of wom-
en to men, leading them to have limited alterna-
tives to a homemaker role. However, the PRB data
for 1986–1998 indicate that some of these coun-
tries (Algeria, Bangladesh, Jordan, Kuwait, Moroc-
co, Syria, Turkey) are among the small number
that achieved reduction of at least two children
per woman.
The importance of the mortality transition in
influencing the fertility transition is suggested by
Figure 2. Each dot is a country, positioned in terms
of graphical relationship in the PRB data between
life expectancy in 1986 and the TFR in 1998. The
relationship is quite striking. No country with a life
expectancy less than fifty has a TFR below 3.0.
Remember that before the twentieth century, vir-
tually all countries had life expectancies below fifty
years. In addition, the figure shows a very strong
tendency for countries with life expectancies above
seventy to have TFRs below 2.0.
For a number of years, experts on population
policy were divided on the potential role of contra-
ceptive programs in facilitating fertility declines
(Davis 1967). Since contraceptive technology has
become increasingly cheap and effective, some
(Enke 1967) argue that modest international ex-
penditures on these programs in high-fertility coun-
tries could have significant rapid impacts on re-
production rates. Others (Davis 1967) point out,
however, that family planning programs would
only permit couples to achieve their desires, which
may not be compatible with societal replacement
level fertility. The primary implication was that
family planning programs would not be effective
without social structures that encouraged the small
family. A recent consensus on the value of family
planning programs relative to social structural
change seems to have emerged. Namely, family
planning programs may be quite useful for achiev-
ing low fertility where the social structure is consis-
tent with a small family ideal (Mauldin and
Berelson 1978).While the outlook for further fertility declines
in the world is good, it is difficult to say whether
and when replacement-level fertility will be achieved.
Many, many major social changes have occurred in
societies throughout the world in the past half-
century. These changes have generally been
unprecented in world history, and thus we have
little historical experience from which to judge
their impact on fertility, both levels and speed of
change (Mason 1997).Some caution should be excercised about fu-
ture fertility declines in some of the societies that
have been viewed as leaders in the developing
world. For instance, in a number of Asian socie-
ties, a strong preference toward sons still exists,
and couples are concerned as much about having
an adequate number of sons survive to adulthood
as they are about total sons and daughters. Since
pre-birth gender control is still difficult, many
couples have a number of girl babies before they
are successful in bearing a son. If effective gender
control is achieved, some of these societies will
almost certainly attain replacement-level fertility.In other parts of the world such as sub-Saharan
Africa, the future of still-fragile fertility transitions
may well depend on unknown changes in the
organization of families. Caldwell (1976), in a widely
respected theory of demographic transition that
incorporates elements of both cultural innovation
and recognition of the role of children in tradi-
tional societies in maintaining net flows of wealth
to parents, has speculated that the traditional ex-
tended kinship family model now predominant in
the region facilitates high fertility. Families often
form economic units where children are impor-
tant work resources. The extended structure of
the household makes the cost of any additional
member low relative to a nuclear family structure.
Further declines in fertility will depend on the