Contraception and the Demographic Transition
受英国历史经验启发，修改贝克尔生育率范式，引入社会性避孕成本，研究现代避孕技术扩散如何连接死亡率下降与生育率转型，对理解近期人口转型有启示。
Inspired by the historical English experience, we modify the Beckerian paradigm of fertility by incorporating costly, societal influence on contraception. Heterogeneous, generationally‐linked households choose between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ contraception. The modern has a higher fixed but lower variable cost of averting childbirths. Initially the rich adopt the modern, which unleashes society‐wide diffusion. Eventually everyone switches, lowering fertility further and across households. Hastening the switch is falling child mortality. Quantitative experiments suggest contraception was a vital link between the historical mortality and fertility transitions, though not the latter’s proximate cause. Implications for more recent transitions are discussed.