This dataset supports research on the global fertility transition, examining why economic and health progress alone fail to account for observed changes. It focuses on the role of family institutions, particularly marriage and inheritance customs, across all countries worldwide over the past 60 years. The analysis covers sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, noting regions with fertility declines that diverged from predictions.
Use Cases
- Analyze the relationship between marriage customs and fertility declines across countries to test classic transition theories.
- Investigate how inheritance customs correlate with observed fertility changes in sub-Saharan Africa versus parts of Asia and Latin America.
- Model the divergence between predicted fertility based on GDP per capita and human capital and actual fertility levels over a 60-year period.
- Examine the association between child and maternal mortality rates and fertility trends within countries, controlling for family institution variables.
Strengths
- Global coverage includes all countries worldwide, enabling cross-country comparative analysis.
- Temporal depth spans the past 60 years, allowing for longitudinal examination of fertility changes.
- Focus on specific family institution variables like marriage and inheritance customs provides a distinct analytical angle.
- Explicitly addresses the puzzle of fertility declines not fully explained by economic and health progress metrics.
Limitations
- The smallest geographic unit is country-level, limiting sub-national or regional analysis.
- Specific data dimensions like row count, column count, and file formats are unknown, complicating assessment of dataset scale and structure.
- Relies on the author's theoretical framework linking family institutions to fertility, which may influence variable selection and interpretation.
Provenance
- Source
- ICPSR Harvested Dataverse
- Collection Method
- null
- Time Range
- Covers approximately the past 60 years (from the mid-20th century to the early 21st century).
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- All countries worldwide.