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Striking changes are occurring in family structure in the developing world, and fertility is falling due to a weakening of traditional family controls and a declining value given to procreation. A model of marriage focused on marriage as economic transaction helps explain these diverse trends. The findings reveal a serious threat to young women in such transitional societies. The declining value of their procreative power puts women at the mercy of impersonal, market-driven economic forces with which they are ill equipped to deal.

Although the world demographic transition from high to low fertility appears to be nearing its completion, observed in perspective, this is the latest in a series of such transitions stretching back into prehistory. A stable new equilibrium is far from inevitable; indeed, it is unlikely. Many countries are experiencing below‐replacement‐level fertility, and this trend is spreading. Couples are now able to choose their family size, free of the traditional pressures to bear children that was characteristic of most traditional societies. In fact, most societal pressures for the last generation have been distinctly antinatalist, in response to the enormous attention paid by the media to the "population bomb" agenda. This antinatalist attitude is changing, however, and what seems more likely than either a stationary or declining world population is a new growth cycle reflecting a resurgence of fertility as a response to growing material affluence and potential technological mastery of environmental challenges. Societal pressures and policies will play a role in this transition as they did in earlier ones.

Recent evidence from Kenya indicates that contraceptive prevalence is rising and fertility is falling. Factors related to this change include relatively high levels of education, availability of health services, exposure of modernizing media and urban lifestyles, and a greatly strengthened family planning service delivery system. (DSE)

AbstractThe general outline of the demographic transition in western Europe is reviewed as a background for understanding demographic changes occurring in Asia and Africa. Although a number of scholars have held that Africa is somehow "different" and would not follow the path to demographic transition in the near future, recent evidence from Kenya indicates that contraceptive prevalence is rising and fertility is falling. Factors related to this change include relatively high levels of education, availability of health services, exposure to modernizing media and urban lifestyles, and a greatly strengthened family planning service delivery system.