Why a long-term perspective is beneficial for demographers

Fatal Places? Contextual Effects on Infant and Child Mortality in Early Twentieth Century England and Wales

“…While the conclusion that social class differences have always been present is not well supported by the evidence (Antonovsky 1967; Reid 2021; Woods and Williams 1995), the focus on mechanisms and routes to better or worse health in different groups has chimed with the way that social differences in infant and child health have been conceptualized and investigated by (historical) demographers. Mosley and Chen (1984) expressed these mechanisms as ‘proximate determinants’: the intermediary factors through which the more distal (societal) causes have to operate.…”

“…These debates have been hard to resolve because much of the data, particularly for historic health and mortality, have only been available at an aggregate level (Reid 2021). Aggregate data was used not only for all the early analyses of early age mortality by social class mentioned above, but also for many geographical analyses of early age mortality.…”

Fertility and faith: The danger of a grand narrative

“…This narrative in turn can lead to developmental idealism -the belief that, if the West went through certain transformations on its way to economic development, such as female empowerment, then these stages should be desirable goals in their own right, because they will then subsequently 'cause' development to follow (Thornton et al, 2015). What modernisation, reading history sideways and developmental idealism narratives all have in common is the assumption that Western Europe has reached a pinnacle of development to which all other populations should aspire (Reid, 2021;Watkins & Hodgson, 2019). The inevitability and universality of demographic transition is given similar rather uncritical treatment, side-lining the huge diversity in the mechanisms and timing of the onset and progress of transition in different historical and geographic contexts (Johnson-Hanks, 2008;Kirk, 1996;Szreter, 1993).…”