Guinnane T W, Okun B S, Trussell J
Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8269.
Demography. 1994 Feb;31(1):1-20.
The Princeton project on the decline of fertility in Europe (the European Fertility Project) suggested that this historical fertility transition occurred virtually simultaneously in a wide variety of economic and social environments. This finding has been cited widely as evidence for an innovation/diffusion view of fertility transitions. We demonstrate that the demographic methods used to date the fertility transition in Europe--primarily Ig, and (to a lesser extent) the Coale-Trussell M&m indices--may fail to detect the initial stages of a fertility transition and therefore cannot be used as the basis for strong statements about the timing of transitions. We review these measurement problems and their implications for the current understanding of the European fertility transition.
普林斯顿欧洲生育率下降项目（欧洲生育率项目）表明，这种历史性的生育率转变几乎在各种各样的经济和社会环境中同时发生。这一发现被广泛引述，作为生育率转变的创新/扩散观点的证据。我们证明，用于确定欧洲生育率转变时间的人口统计学方法——主要是伊斯特林模型，以及（在较小程度上）科尔-特拉斯塞尔总和生育率指数——可能无法检测到生育率转变的初始阶段，因此不能作为对转变时间做出有力论断的依据。我们审视了这些测量问题及其对当前欧洲生育率转变理解的影响。
