The last several decades of the 20th century witnessed dramatic changes in fertility and family and household formation throughout the world. In many wealthy countries, cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing increased dramatically, while fertility fell below replacement levels. Several poorer countries exhibited delayed marriage, very rapid fertility decline as well as sudden increases in divorce and separation and the rapid advance of cohabitation. In many of these countries, we witness a first and second demographic transition compressed into one single, radically new transition. While these changes were long awaited and viewed as the inevitable result of economic development, increasing education, and "Westernization", variability in their pace and apparent plateaus continue to provide researchers with important and interesting challenges. Changes in wealthier countries also exhibit considerable variability that remains unexplained, particularly in countries who joined the second demographic transition quite late and that are experiencing sharp and, in some cases, unprecedented changes.
CDE has a long tradition of excellence in research on U.S. fertility, families and households and has retained a strong research portfolio in this theme, even amidst the personnel changes of recent years. In the past decade, CDE has also strengthened its international scholarship and developed a more extensive agenda of comparative cross-national research, providing insights on the influence of culture and sociopolitical contexts on demographic processes. CDE's research within this theme considers the nature and variation of demographic patterns, as well as the implications of demographic change for other substantive domains such as social and economic inequalities and the allocation of economic rewards, family and kinship roles and responsibilities, and trajectories of individual development and wellbeing.
Working Group Organizers:
Marcy CarlsonJames Raymo
Meetings
CDE Researchers in Fertility, Families and Households
Berger, Lawrence M.Bumpass, Larry
Cancian, Maria
Carlson, Marcy
DeLamater, John D.
DeLeire, Thomas
Durkin, Maureen
Fuguitt, Glenn
Gangl, Markus
Gerber, Ted
Guillot, Michel
Holden, Karen C.
Logan, John Allen
Loveman, Mara
Magnuson, Katherine
Meyer, Daniel R.
Palloni, Alberto
Raymo, James
Schaeffer, Nora Cate
Schmeiser, Maximilian D.
Scholz, John Karl
Schwartz, Christine
Seshadri, Ananth
Taber, Christopher
Thomson, Elizabeth
Turley, Ruth López
Walker, James
Wallace, Geoffrey
Wilson, Franklin
Winsborough, Halliman
Zeng, Zhen