IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/popdev/v25y1999i4p681-702.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Global and Regional Impact of Mortality and Fertility Transitions, 1950–2000

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Heuveline

Abstract

During the second half of the twentieth century, world population grew at a record pace, both in absolute and relative terms, from 2.5 billion to 6 billion (or 1.75 percent annually). Demographers have long identified rapid mortality declines as the main explanation. This article finds that one‐fourth of today's world population is alive because of mortality improvements since mid‐century. Very rapid growth is unlikely to continue as substantial fertility declines also occurred in recent decades. This article finds that already by the year 2000, these fertility declines have almost exactly compensated for the impact of mortality declines from mid‐century levels. This result may suggest homeostasis, but analyses of underlying trends contradict this impression. First, the impact of fertility declines will soon and significantly exceed that of mortality declines. Second, that mortality and fertility declines jointly affect the size of the world population by less than one percent conceals a significant impact on the population's age composition as well as on regional population sizes.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Heuveline, 1999. "The Global and Regional Impact of Mortality and Fertility Transitions, 1950–2000," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 25(4), pages 681-702, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:popdev:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:681-702
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.1999.00681.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.1999.00681.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1728-4457.1999.00681.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chris Wilson, 2001. "On the Scale of Global Demographic Convergence 1950–2000," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 27(1), pages 155-171, March.
    2. Iris Claus & Les Oxley & Yang Du & Cuifen Yang, 2014. "Demographic Transition And Labour Market Changes: Implications For Economic Development In China," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 617-635, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:popdev:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:681-702. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0098-7921 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.