Second demographic transition

The theory of the second demographic transition was developed in 1987 by the Dutch demographer Dirk J. van de Kaa and the Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe. It builds on the model of demographic transition and represents the attempt to describe the demographic change observed in all industrialized countries after the Second World War as a generalizable phenomenon that can be traced back to a change in values towards post-materialistic and individualistic values. The demographic change after the Second World War can be linked , for example, to: a decrease in the total fertility rate below the maintenance level of 2.1 children per woman, an increase in the average age at marriage and an increase in the average age at the birth of the first child.

For the second demographic transition, van de Kaa (1987: 11) postulated four transitions:

The transition from marriage to unmarried coexistence
The transition from child to couple as the center of the family
The transition from preventive contraception to a “self-actualizing conception”, ie family planning understood as self-actualization
The transition from uniform to pluralistic families and household forms

After van de Kaa initially only described the second demographic transition as a European phenomenon, he later went on to postulate it as a universal phenomenon that followed the (first) demographic transition with a time lag as soon as economic development resulted in a corresponding change in values pull.

Consequences for Aging

As a result of the second demographic transition to the age structure of society (especially of Germans), the high-birth cohorts of the 1950s and especially the 60s are moving up in age structure and are being replaced by cohorts with lower birth rates. This leads to an acceleration of fertility-guided aging.

literature

Dirk J. van de Kaa: Europe's Second Demographic Transition. In: The Population Bulletin. March 1987, Washington, DC