Is the Pace of Social Change Accelerating? - CiteSeerX

Is the Pace of Social Change Accelerating?

Latecomers, Common Languages, and Rapid Historical Declines in Fertility

Thomas K. Rudel* and Linda Hooper**

ABSTRACT

Commentators frequently observe that the pace of social change accelerated during the20th century. Processes of industrialization, demographic change, and human-inducedenvironmental change all occurred more rapidly at the end of the century than they did atthe beginning. While claims about accelerating social change abound, few studies attemptto explain it. This article tries to do so through a quantitative analysis of the changing paceof fertility declines over the past two centuries. It outlines two possible explanations for theacceleration: a social integration thesis which emphasizes our growing interconnectivity;and a ‘latecomer effect’ which attributes the accelerated processes to political efforts byelites in poorer countries who want to ‘catch up’ with more affluent countries. An empiri-cal analysis of fertility declines provides support for both explanations. Increased socialintegration through the spread of common languages may have facilitated the transmissionof new norms about fertility, and the creation of elite initiated family planning programsafter the Second World War expanded access to contraceptives.

Keywords: fertility declines, latecomers, social change

Introduction

In the last years of the twentieth century, change accelerates . . . As instantcommunications spread and power concentrates, . . . ideas spread faster.(Chambers, 1997: 1)

. . . a strong case can be made that the history of capitalism has been character-ized by (a) speed up in the pace of social life . . . (Harvey, 1989: 240)

Social scientists and other commentators have repeatedly observed that thepace of social change has accelerated during the 19th and 20th centuries. Accel-erating rates of change have characterized a wide range of important socialprocesses. Economic sociologists have noted how the pace of industrializationhas become more rapid during the past two centuries. France, Germany, and

Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications www.sagepublications.com(London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi)Vol 46(4): 275–296. DOI: 10.1177/0020715205059204

* Rutgers University, USA.** United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Geneva, Switzerland.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 18, 2016cos.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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Russia industrialized more quickly in the late 19th century than Britain did inthe mid-19th century (Barsby, 1969; Gerschenkron, 1970; Patel, 1962). Japanindustrialized more quickly before and after the Second World War than did anyof the European nations prior to the First World War (Vogel, 1991). Korea indus-trialized more rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s than Japan did several decadesearlier (Amsden, 1989).

Associated processes have also occurred more quickly. Rates of urban-ization accelerated (Porter and Sheppard, 1998; Roberts, 1994), and processesof proletarianization occurred more rapidly (McMichael, 1996). The fertilitydeclines associated with the demographic transition occurred more rapidly afterthe Second World War than they did before the war (Kirk, 1971; Watkins, 1987).Human-induced land cover changes have followed the same pattern. In placesthat experienced deforestation during the 20th century, it occurred more rapidlyafter the Second World War than it did before the Second World War (Palloni,1994).

Taken together, these patterns led one panel of scholars to conclude that‘the developing world has covered as much ground in a generation, in a materialsense, as the developed economies did in a century’ (National Research Council,1999: 64). Geographers see the accelerated rates of change as part of a processof time–space compression in which people both do more things and travelacross more space in less time (Harvey, 1989; Luke and O’Tuathail, 1998; Stein,2001).

While the above observations may collectively convey an impression ofinevitability about accelerating rates of social change, rates can slow down aswell. For example, rates of urbanization in the developing world accelerateduntil 1980, but in recent years they have slowed down (Brockerhoff, 1999). Fluc-tuations in rates of change raise questions about the causes for the ‘speed ups’and ‘slow downs’. These questions about the pace of social change can haveimportant practical implications. For example, the speed with which societiesconvert from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources will most likely influencethe magnitude of the disruptions associated with climate change. Under thesecircumstances an inquiry into the causes for fluctuations in the pace of socialchange would seem to be warranted.

Observations about accelerating rates of change take a particular form.They focus on variations in rates of change in societies where it is occurring. Itdoes not address questions about why change occurs in some but not othersocieties. This article takes the same form. Drawing on the work of macro-sociologists and economic historians, it outlines two explanations for accelerat-ing rates of social change, one which attributes the acceleration to increasedsocial integration and another in which acceleration results from political effortsto help latecomer societies to ‘catch up’ with other societies.

Ideally, questions about accelerating rates of social change should beinvestigated simultaneously across a series of important social processes like

276 INT. JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY 46(4)



economic development, ecological modernization (Mol and Sonnenfeld, 2000),and fertility decline. It would be impossible to report on a research enterpriseof this scope in a single journal article. In this study we have more modest goals.We outline a possible explanation for accelerating rates of social change. Thenwe illustrate this line of reasoning through an exploratory study of fertilitydeclines during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Why focus on one process, fertility declines, for a study of variable ratesof social change? First of all, the acceleration in processes of social change hasoccurred across a wide range of processes, including fertility declines. Therepeated reductions in the projected global population for 2050 reflect therecognition by demographers that fertility has been declining more quickly thanthey had projected it would 10 years ago. Fertility declines offer a suitablesubject for studying fluctuating rates of social change for several other reasons.While in-depth discussions about rates of change have usually involved rates ofeconomic growth, the pattern of accelerating processes of change appears tocharacterize a large number of social processes. Some of these social processeslike fertility decline and ecological modernization are quite different fromeconomic development in that they include personal decision-making (to havea baby or to purchase a new, pollution-free technology) as well as programmaticinitiatives. Given the diversity of processes that exhibit this acceleration in thepace of change, analysts might want to reframe the issue in more general socialscientific terms and investigate its causes outside of the economic domain.

The decision to study fertility declines hinges in part on a theoreticalconsideration. A number of long-running social processes like urbanizationhave not been marked by intentional efforts to quicken its pace. Because at leastone hypothesis about accelerated rates of social change attributes them to inten-tional efforts by elites to quicken the pace, we need to study a process whereelites have made these types of efforts. On these grounds urbanization wouldnot qualify for study, but fertility decline would.

Two other factors recommended fertility declines for study. First,historical data on fertility change is relatively complete which makes it possibleto compare slow declines in fertility during an early period with more rapiddeclines during a more recent period. Second, while demographers havediscussed variable rates of fertility decline (Kirk, 1971; Knodel and van de Walle,1979; Watkins, 1987), only two studies (Bongaarts and Watkins, 1996; Crenshawet al., 2000) have carried out multivariate analyses which examine variations inthe pace of fertility declines, and these papers focus on recent fertility declines,since 1950. This article focuses on the changing pace of fertility declines over alonger historical period, beginning with France in the late 18th century.

The goal of this case study is not to produce a ‘better’ explanation foraccelerating rates of fertility decline than those explanations already offered bydemographers. Rather we want to see how much empirical ground is lost whenwe recast the demographic explanation in more general social scientific terms.

RUDEL AND HOOPER: ACCELERATING SOCIAL CHANGE? 277



We want to ‘satisfice’ rather than ‘maximize’ with our explanation. If a series ofsimilar investigations of other social processes produce ‘satisfactory’ results,then we might be able to speak with confidence about a general explanation foraccelerating rates of social change.

Explanations for Accelerating Rates of Social Change

Several analysts have observed that fertility rates have declined more quicklyin contemporary developing countries than they did in 19th and early 20thcentury Europe because related social processes have occurred more quickly inthe developing countries. For example, mortality dropped faster; incomes rosemore rapidly, and educational systems expanded more quickly in Thailand in thelate 20th century than they did in Britain during the 19th century, so it is notsurprising that fertility rates dropped more quickly in Thailand than in Britain(Kirk, 1971; Pritchett, 1994). While this argument in its general form almost hasto be true, it does not seem analytically satisfying because it does not suggestwhy the other, related social processes accelerated. Two arguments drawn fromthe literature on the diffusion of innovations offer more specific explanationsfor the more rapid pace of change in recent years.

Social change always involves the diffusion of new ideas, tools, tech-niques, or organizational forms. Two broad sets of factors influence the pace ofdiffusion (Brown, 1981). One set inheres in the adopters and affects their abilityor inclination to adopt innovations. A common language, communication links,and similarity in social structural positions should accelerate the rate with whichan innovation and demand for it spreads through a population. Informationdiffuses rapidly, and preferences change in large segments of a population atabout the same time. A second set of factors, concerning the agencies whichpromote diffusion, also affects the pace with which social change occurs. Theagencies create institutions like family planning clinics or industrial develop-ment parks which deliver innovations to a region. Because the agencies’ effortsaffect the supply of the innovations, the extent of their efforts can affect howrapidly people in a society adopt an innovation.

The most plausible explanations for the accelerating pace of socialchange build on these two traditions in innovation – diffusion research. Weoutline each of these explanations below.

1. The Social Integration Thesis

This explanation attributes the acceleration in the diffusion of innovations tothe increasing speed of communications and growing similarity of socialconditions in urbanizing and industrializing societies. The proliferation ofmeans of communication, most notably through the spread of mass media,should make it easier for individuals to learn about innovations. As learning




accelerates, rates of change in associated social processes should also acceler-ate (Freese, 1997).

More specifically, the Internet, the spread of a common language, theacquisition of televisions by rural households, and the creation of telephoneconnections between rural and urban communities should facilitate the spreadof new ideas (Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971). Under these circumstances dis-parities between rural and urban populations in the adoption of new techniquesshould decline (Critchfield, 1994). Applied to processes of fertility decline, thisline of reasoning would predict large rural–urban differentials in fertility amongthe first countries to experience declines, and smaller rural–urban differentialsamong countries that have experienced the declines more recently. Pursuing thisline of analysis, Watkins (1987) attributed the faster pace of recent fertilitydeclines in 20th century Thailand and China to simultaneous declines in ruralas well as urban places. The spread of languages of commerce like English inIndia, French in West Africa, and Spanish in Latin America should break downlinguistic barriers to the adoption of new practices. Under these circumstanceslinguistic barriers to the spread of new norms should not slow fertility declinesto the same extent that they did in 19th century Europe (Watkins, 1987).

2. The Latecomer Effect

The second explanation for increased rates of fertility decline involves some‘intellectual trespassing’ (Hirschman, 1981), taking an idea from economichistorians and applying it to historical demography. In what has become the‘most widely accepted’ model of European industrialization (Gregory, 1974;Weiss and Hobson, 1995), Alexander Gerschenkron (1962) argued that the firstcountries to industrialize did so in distinctively different ways than subsequentcountries. Gerschenkron compared efforts to industrialize in Western Europe(the pioneers) and Eastern Europe (the latecomers) in the 19th and early 20thcenturies. Compared with pioneers like Britain, latecomers like Germany orRussia mobilized the political apparatus of the state in more self-consciousefforts to industrialize. Among the pioneers the process of industrialization wasalready well under way before people coined a term to describe it and decidedwhether or not this societal transformation was desirable. The state did partici-pate in the earliest efforts to industrialize, but the effort was almost inadvertent,part of a general effort to support prominent citizens in war-related activities(Weiss and Hobson, 1995). Elites in latecomer states faced a quite different situ-ation. They could identify a discrete set of changes (industrialization) which theyregarded as crucial to their survival, so they used the state to speed up theadoption of the changes. Industrialization occurred more quickly, and, presum-ably, it did so in latecomer societies because political elites knew what theywanted and imported ideas and technologies to get what they wanted in shorterperiods of time.




Subsequent analyses have emphasized the discursive nature ofprocesses of change among latecomers. In analyses of late industrialization inEast Asia both Ronald Dore and Alice Amsden emphasize how latecomersshared ‘a sense of backwardness . . . which provided a charter for state action tomobilize resources and to take initiatives and risks’ (Dore, 1990: 359). ‘Catchingup with the West’ became a shared objective among elites in Japan (Dore, 1987:8). Several decades later Korean leaders wanted to catch up with both Japanand the West (Amsden, 1989). Under these circumstances influential peoplebecome latter day ‘Jeremiahs’ who articulate ‘crisis narratives’ of loss or declinewhich make it easier to mobilize resources for political efforts to eliminate asociety’s disadvantage (Kates, 1995; Roe, 1995).

To catch up, latecomers learned the techniques of industrial productionfrom their predecessors in other countries. The learning among latecomersproceeded more quickly than the processes of invention and innovation thatdetermined the pace of change among the pioneers (Amsden, 1989; Dore, 1987).The latecomers’ learning focused on the organization of production in manu-facturing plants, but it also extended to a wide array of complementary socialchanges. In formulating plans for social transformation, the latecomers probablybenefited from the ‘theorization’ of earlier industrialization experiences (Strangand Meyer, 1994). Theorization occurs when observers create concepts andoutline cause–effect sequences in a way that suggests a coherent strategy forinducing industrialization in a place. The new theories expedite processes ofdiffusion because the theories make ‘parallel circumstances easier to see’(Strang and Meyer, 1994: 104), so latecomers adopt policies more readily. Thetheories also highlight the pioneers’ mistakes which latecomers can then avoid.

These discursive practices have political consequences. With the meansto the desired end relatively clear, the state intervenes actively in the industri-alization process; highly capitalized business groups lead the process; firmsemphasize middle level managerial competence, and the state places a highpriority on the provision of a low cost, highly educated labor force. All of theseemphases speed the process of industrialization (Amsden, 1989). As this list ofinitiatives indicates, elites in latecomer societies pursue multiple political meansto the desired end. It suggests that, as pioneers give way to latecomers inprocesses of social change, the political means to the desired end multiply.

A study of the rapid decline in fertility in Japan after the Second WorldWar underscores this point. The Japanese used more means to control theirfertility than the Europeans had during the previous century. In the words ofone observer, the Japanese fertility transition is a:

picture of a people responding in almost every demographic manner thenknown to the same powerful stimulus. Within a brief period they quickly post-poned marriage, embraced contraception, began sterilization, utilized abortion,and migrated outward. (Davis, 1963: 349)




As these remarks imply, it is important not to assume that the diverseinitiatives undertaken by latecomers all have their origins in the public sector.Public sector elites may take the lead in establishing a ‘learning’ culture, butelites in non-governmental organizations and private enterprises also partici-pate by promoting organizational cultures which stress innovation. Dore (1987:46) describes large corporations during Japan’s industrialization as ‘learningorganizations’. These organizations became one more means, among an histori-cally unprecedented multiplicity of means, which enabled the Japanese to indus-trialize rapidly.

An analysis which emphasizes the importance of latecomer effects inexplaining accelerating rates of fertility decline would focus on the effects offamily planning programs on the pace of fertility decline. These programsconform to one of the basic requirements of Gerschenkron’s model in that elitesinitiate a political effort to establish the programs after deciding that fertilitydecline serves a larger collective interest. The elites involved in family planningdo differ in one important respect from the elites in Gerschenkron’s originalargument. He developed his argument to explain events during the late 19th andearly 20th centuries, a period of increasingly powerful nation-states, so hisargument features elites working in the national interest. The emergence oftransnational movements and organizations since the Second World War haschanged the composition of the elites who participate in latecomer efforts(Meyer et al., 1997). In the case of family planning projects many of the influ-ential individuals participate in an international movement to control fertility(Barrett and Frank, 1999). The movement includes members of national elites,but it also includes people of other nationalities who primarily identify them-selves as members of a professional elite who focus on the ‘population problem’.The professionals have developed a series of new medical technologies forcontraception since the Second World War, and through applied research theyhave identified more effective means for promoting family planning. Do thesepurposive social actions (Merton, 1936) produce the intended effects?

The answer to this question depends in part on how people implementfamily planning programs. A typical program makes it easier to obtain contra-ceptives and promotes the use of new contraceptive technologies. Programs alsoestablish rights to abortion, initiate normative campaigns to limit family size, andcreate family planning services such as post-natal infant care (Ross andMauldin, 1996). When the proponents of family planning create these programs,they multiply the means for limiting family size in ways that seem typical of late-comer efforts. An aggressive program of establishing family planning clinicscould expedite fertility declines in societies which have experienced little socialintegration. Establishing clinics in far flung places could deliver contraceptiveservices to a large proportion of the population in societies in which little urban-ization has occurred. The women in these communities may not be literate, but,as information about the effectiveness of contraceptives spreads by word of




mouth, adoption rates could rise. If measures of family planning construed inthis fashion predict the pace of fertility decline in a place, then the acceleratingrate of decline would be attributable at least in part to latecomer effects.

The two hypothesized explanations for accelerating rates of socialchange focus on different segments of society. Arguments about how increasedsocial integration accelerates the adoption of innovations focuses on the lives ofordinary citizens while arguments about latecomer effects identify politicalefforts by elites as the cause for accelerating rates of social change. Becauseactions by elites, such as the provision of widespread public education, affectmass publics, it is important not to overdraw the distinction between the twoexplanations. They complement one another and may work together to acceler-ate rates of social change. The role of mortality declines in accelerating fertilitydeclines illustrates this point. Mortality declines affect fertility declines byincreasing the numbers of surviving children which in turn gives families incen-tives to limit their fertility (Watkins, 1987). Most 19th and early 20th centurymortality declines had their origins in two changes. One of them is clearly associ-ated with political decisions by elites, the provision of sewers and potable waterin cities, but the other change, an improvement in diets, may have spread rapidlyin part because the different segments of the population communicated moreeasily (Condran and Crimmins-Gardner, 1978; Schofield et al., 1991). The twoexplanations are conceptually and empirically distinct but not mutually exclus-ive explanations for accelerating rates of social change. Taken together, ourarguments suggest the following form for a multivariate analysis.

Rate of Change in Fertility = f(change in social integration, latecomer programs,change in mortality, control variables)

We can put this argument for accelerating rates of social change to a testwith data on rates of fertility decline across nations over the past two centuries.Because declines in mortality and fertility have reciprocal effects on oneanother, it seems appropriate to explore the determinants of the pace of fertil-ity declines through a two stage least squares analysis in which mortalitychanges as well as fertility changes are endogenous variables. The model to beestimated takes the form depicted in Figure 1.

Measures and Methods

The sample consists of all countries with populations of more than one millionpersons which have experienced sustained fertility declines of more than 10percent during the past two centuries. Most small island states are thereforeexcluded from the analysis.1 An appreciable number of Middle Eastern andAfrican countries which have not experienced significant fertility declines arealso excluded from the analysis. A lack of historical records for the earliest timeperiods under investigation limits the variables available for use.2 Using the




sources listed in the Appendix, we have assembled data on changes in crude birthrates and six potential explanatory variables: changes in mortality rates, thenumber of languages spoken in a country, the ratio of urban to rural fertility rates,family planning efforts and two control variables, GNP per capita, 1980 andpercentage of the population living in rural areas in 1960.3 The control variablesserve as a means for separating out differences in the historical trajectories ofdevelopment in each country from the specific effects of the integration and late-comer variables. The specific measures for each variable are described below.

Change in Crude Birth Rates (Logged)Our analysis uses crude birth rates (CBR) to compute changes in fertility. Whiletotal fertility rates (TFR) would be the preferable measure for birth ratesbecause TFRs correct for changes in the age composition of populations, wecould not compute TFRs for countries which experienced fertility declines inthe 19th century, so, to preserve the long historical reach of this analysis, we haveused CBRs to measure fertility declines. The descriptive data on declines incrude birth rates presented in Figure 2 suggests the form that the measure offertility decline should take.4 The curves for both the pioneer and latecomerdeclines began with sharp drops, moderated some, and then began to drop moresharply. A simple, roughly consistent representation of this irregular patternwhich would be a line with a constant slope which in turn implies that a simplerate measure of fertility decline (decline in CBR/years during decline) shouldbe adequate for the analysis undertaken here.

Change in Crude Death Rates (Logged)Crude death rates have the same deficiencies as crude birth rates as a basemeasure for calculating rates of change, but the absence of alternatives for


Figure 1.A model for the pace of fertility decline

Controls

GNP per capita

% rural pop. Social integration

Number of languages

Rural–urban fertility

ratio

Instrumental

variables

Pace of mortality

decline

Pace of fertility

decline

Latecomer effect

Family planning



measuring change in the first countries to experience fertility declines requiresthe use of crude death rates. The declines in crude death rates, defined as asustained drop of more than 10 percent, begin on average 20 years before thedeclines in crude birth rates (1924 compared to 1944) and the period of rapiddecline in death rates ceases 13 years before the rapid declines in birth rates end(1976 compared to 1989). This temporal ordering of changes in death and birthrates is consistent with a cause and effect sequence. One could still argue thatdeath rate declines and birth rate declines are reciprocally related because thelower death rates among children induce attempts to limit fertility, and the lowerfertility rates in turn promote child well-being which reduces mortality stillfurther. Given the presence of these reciprocal effects, change in death rates istreated as an endogenous variable in the analyses reported below.

Urban–Rural Fertility RatioThis variable measures the difference between urban and rural fertility ratesduring the historical period in which fertility rates are declining. According to thesocial integration thesis, this ratio should approach one during the 20th century asurban–rural disparities in social conditions decline. The convergence in crude birthrates should, according to this argument, lead to simultaneous declines in urbanand rural fertility rates which would accelerate the overall rate of decline. Wecomputed the urban–rural fertility ratios for a date during the period of decliningfertility in a country. For most Western European countries the ratio representsdifferences between urban and rural crude birth rates during the late 19th century.


Figure 2.Rates of fertility decline by year of onset

Fertility

rates

Years since onset

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Pre-Second World

War nations

Post-Second World

War nations



For contemporary developing countries the ratio represents differences betweenurban and rural fertility rates at some date during the past 50 years.5

The Number of Languages Spoken in a Country (Logged)This variable uses linguistic diversity as a measure of cultural fragmentation ina country. The editors of the 1983 Europa yearbook counted a language as beingspoken in a country if it was spoken by more than a small minority of people ina country. Languages spoken by small groups of indigenous peoples in develop-ing countries would not be included in the Europa count while languagesspoken by larger indigenous groups would be included. The larger the numberof spoken languages in a country, the more culturally divided it would be whichin turn should slow down the spread of new norms about fertility (Watkins,1987). Put differently, linguistic homogeneity in a society would accelerate thespread of new norms about fertility by making it easier for people to communi-cate with each other. Cultural homogeneity in a society could have an additionalfertility reducing effect that would not be diffusionist. It should suppress compe-tition between ethnic groups and, in so doing, reduce pronatalist incentives forfamilies to produce more children than competing ethnic groups (Crenshaw etal., 2000). Our measure of linguistic diversity has a static quality to it, so it doesnot capture the spread of ‘languages of commerce’ which would have an inte-grating effect. This source of error may not be particularly large in the case offertility decline given that languages of commerce usually spread first amongsmall numbers of traders who should not have a significant impact on the fertil-ity rates of an entire society.

Family Planning ProgramsThis variable provides a comprehensive measure of family planning efforts indifferent countries since the 1960s. It is an index with separate componentswhich measure the availability of contraceptives, normative campaigns to limitfertility, the right to abortion, and the availability of privately or publiclyprovided support services for childbearing households. Ross and Mauldin (1994,1996) gathered the data used to compute program effort in 1982. They sent ques-tionnaires about program effort to an average of six key informants in eachnation. The respondents had extensive knowledge about political efforts toestablish family planning in their countries, and they worked in a variety of insti-tutional settings: universities, donor agencies, or family planning programs. Theauthors conducted a second survey of family planning efforts in 1989 and foundlittle change in country scores. The absence of change suggests that these scoresare relatively stable from year to year (Ross and Mauldin, 1994). The stabilityin scores suggests that they reflect long-term differences in program effort whichare likely to influence fertility rates in a sustained way. Following Ross andMauldin’s practice, we have grouped the national program efforts during the1980s into four categories, strong, moderate, weak, and very weak. All of the




countries whose fertility declines occurred before the Second World War havebeen coded as having weak or non-existent family planning programs. Thisjudgment accords with research on historical changes in population controldiscourse and policy. Elites emphasized the positive effects of populationgrowth on a nation’s strength before the First World War and eugenics duringthe inter-war period. Only after the Second World War does a concern withlimiting population growth through family planning become the dominantdiscourse (Barrett and Frank, 1999). By implication the pre-war fertility declinesoccurred in countries with weak or non-existent family planning efforts.

Control Variables

GNP Per Capita, 1980To capture the economic historical dimension of development, we includedGNP per capita in the equations. A measure of GNP from an earlier historicalperiod would have been preferable, but problems with missing data for manycountries prevented the use of an earlier measure.

Percentage of the Population Living in Rural Areas, 1960To capture the social historical dimension of development, we included ameasure of urbanization in 1960 in the equations.

Instrumental Variables

Literacy Rates Among AdultsThe initial 19th century estimates come from retrospective analyses of data inmarriage records and data on military recruits (Cipolla, 1969). Estimates forlater periods come primarily from records on the proportions of school agedchildren enrolled in elementary schools.

CO2 Emissions Per Capita, 1990This is a proxy measure for amount of urbanization and industrialization in acountry (source: United Nations, 2003).

As required in a two stage least squares analysis, neither literacy ratesnor CO2 emissions per capita were significantly related to rates of change inbirth rates. The zero order correlation coefficients with birth rate change were–.048 (p =.603) for literacy and –.072 (p =.267) for CO2 emissions.

The Pace of Change: Descriptive Patterns

Figure 2 groups countries into two categories according to the date whendeclines in fertility began, before and after the Second World War. The observeddeclines in fertility accord with the general pattern discussed above; fertility




declines accelerate during the more recent period. While fertility declines havenow ceased in almost all of the countries where they began before the war, theycontinue in most of the countries with dates of onset after the war. This circum-stance suggests that the differences in pace between pioneers and latecomersmay stem from differences in the length of observation. If fertility ratesroutinely decline more quickly right after onset than they do three or fourdecades later, then the truncated nature of the data sets for countries experi-encing post-war fertility declines could explain why fertility has declined soquickly in these countries. A visual comparison of the slopes of the two curvesin Figure 2 during the first 30 years of fertility decline discounts this possibility.The more rapid declines again occur in the post-war countries. This finding indi-cates that the shorter period of observation for countries which have experi-enced recent fertility declines does not fully account for differences in the paceof decline.

Table 1 presents a more fine grained analysis of rates of change,grouping nations into four cohorts according to the date when fertility declinesbegan. The table also presents descriptive statistics for potential explanatoryvariables for the same four cohorts. The composition of each cohort goes,roughly, as follows. Western European and English-speaking settler societiesoutside of Europe make up the 1785–1900 group; Eastern European societiescomprise most of the 1900–45 group; East/Southeast Asian and Latin Americansocieties predominate in the 1945–70 group, while Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan African countries are in the 1970–92 group.6

Fertility declines more quickly in each succeeding cohort of nations, andmortality declines follow the same pattern. Not surprisingly, family planningefforts are much greater among nations in the later cohorts. The urban–ruralfertility ratios do increase, as predicted by the social integration thesis, but thesedifferences are small in magnitude, and they only distinguish between the firstsocieties to experience prolonged fertility declines, in Western Europe, andother societies.


Table 1.Rates of fertility decline and values of related variables by date of onset

Date of onset of fertility declines

1785–1900 1900–45 1945–70 1970–92

% decline in crude birth rate/year .24c .31c .64d .72d

% decline in crude death rate/year .17 .24 .32 .39Urban/rural fertility ratio .73a .85b .84b .81b

Number of languages 2.47 2.31 2.70 4.06Family planning effort 0 .33 2.00 1.96

Note: differences of means between subsets ‘a’ and ‘b’ and between subsets ‘c’ and ‘d’ are significant at p < .10.



Explanations for the Accelerating Pace of Change: A Multivariate Analysis

Table 2 presents the results from the second stage of a two stage least squaresanalyses of rates of change in fertility using measures for the social integrationand latecomer theses with two outliers, Papua New Guinea (PNG) andRussia–USSR, deleted from the population.7

Columns two through four in Table 2 provide an assessment of theability of the latecomer and social integration variables to explain the acceler-ation in rates of fertility decline. The latecomer variable, family planningprogram effort, has the strongest effect, but a social integration variable, thenumber of languages in a country, also influences the pace of fertility decline inthe expected direction. These findings are quite robust, remaining roughly thesame when we use different instruments for mortality declines in the 2SLS orwhen we use OLS instead of 2SLS techniques. The equations do not suffer fromsevere problems of collinearity.

Discussion

Interpreted dynamically, these findings suggest that the spread of family planningprograms and common commercial languages after the Second World War accel-erated the pace of fertility declines. Like other recent work (Bongaart andWatkins, 1996; Crenshaw et al., 2000), the results of this analysis point to politicalefforts to strengthen family planning programs after the Second World War as themost important cause for the accelerated declines in fertility in the post-warperiod. The association between the strength of a family planning effort and the


Table 2.The pace of fertility declines across nations: a two stages least squares analysis

Variables (1) (2) (3) (4)

ControlsGNP per capita 1980 –.093*** –.041** –.035* –.039**

(.018) (.019) (.019) (.017)% Rural pop. 1960 .005 .001 .003 .004

(.004) (.004) (.004) (.003)Death rate decline (predicted) –2.132* –1.084 –1.009 –1.170

(.940) (.899) (.878) (.813)Family planning .279*** .288*** .296***

(.057) (.056) (.052)Number of languages –.143** –.151**

(.067) (.061) Urban/rural fertility ratio –.135

(.210)r2 (adj.) .370 .523 .546 .616r .626 .740 .759 .804cases 86 77 77 76

Note: * p < .10, ** p < .05, *** p < .001.



rate of fertility decline could be construed as an artifact of the coding schemewhich assigns values of 0 for family planning efforts to countries where pre-Second World War fertility declines occurred slowly and a varying set of valuesfor family planning efforts to countries with post-war declines which proceededmore quickly. This line of argument runs into two problems. First, the differencesin coding for pre-war and post-war societies reflect real differences in the politi-cal strength of family planning efforts during those historical periods (Barrett andFrank, 1999). Second, differences between nations after the Second World War inthe strength of their family planning efforts explain a significant amount of thepost-war variation in the pace of fertility declines.8 The strength of the familyplanning efforts seems to have made a difference in the pace of fertility declines.

The significance of linguistic diversity in explaining differences in thepace of fertility decline during the post-war period underscores the importanceof viewing the latecomer and social integration theses as complementary ratherthan alternative explanations for accelerated fertility declines. Strong familyplanning programs only accelerate fertility declines in situations where peoplecan communicate easily about the presence of family planning services. Wherelinguistic diversity creates barriers of communication, even strong programefforts may not be able to induce the spread of new norms about fertility.Conversely, the spread of a common language through a population shouldaccelerate processes of social change like fertility decline.

The failure of the urban–rural fertility ratio to predict the pace offertility declines seems surprising given the recent examples of Asian fertilitydeclines where the rapid pace of the decline stemmed in part from simu-ltaneous declines in both urban and rural areas (Watkins, 1987). The particu-lar characteristics of rural–urban ties in the wet rice growing regions of Southand East Asia may account for the pervasive declines there. The rural, wetrice growing districts near cities in this region have large proportions of theirlabor forces working in the non-farm sector in part because they have highenough population densities to support numerous small manufacturing enter-prises (McGee, 1991). Rural areas in other regions do not have this fertilityinfluencing industrial character, so disparities between urban and rural fertil-ity rates persist in these places even though they experience rapid declines infertility.

Conclusion: Reframing Fertility Declines to Explain the Accelerating Pace ofSocial Change

The purpose of this article is not to introduce new findings about two centuriesof fertility decline, a topic that demographers have investigated exhaustively.Rather it has been to show that accelerating rates of fertility decline can beadequately understood in the more general social scientific terms of increasedsocial integration and elite efforts to ‘catch up’ with other people and places (the




latecomer effect). In this sense accelerating declines in fertility represent, withappropriate caveats about the importance of local, conjunctural patterns ofcausation, a specific instance of a more general trend. If studies of fluctuatingrates of change in other social processes produce similar findings, then a generalexplanation for accelerating rates of social change might be discernible.

The general pattern would take the following form. Among the pioneersthe process begins before people have coined a term to describe it. Over timepeople create terms to describe the change, evaluate it, and theorize about it. Atthis point elites working in latecomer societies may draw upon the theories tobegin a self-conscious process of societal transformation; they use the powersof the state to speed the process, in particular to speed the process of learningand technological borrowing that makes it possible for latecomers to achieve ina few short years changes that it takes several decades to achieve in the pioneer-ing societies. The spread of common languages through populations speeds thediffusion of innovations. Elites promote these social transformations bothdirectly and indirectly, directly through political support for programs topromote the diffusion of new technologies and indirectly through support formass education which, by spreading new norms and common languages, speedsthe desired transformation.

Just because rates of social change accelerate after an initial period ofslow adoption does not imply that these changes will continue to occur morerapidly during subsequent periods. A recent report of the National Academy ofSciences makes this argument about fertility declines (National ResearchCouncil, 2000). Societies which have not yet experienced fertility declines maybe culturally and economically quite isolated from people who advocate newnorms and make available new technologies that limit fertility. If declines infertility occur in these societies, they may not take place so rapidly. If thisargument is correct, then in temporal terms we might expect to see an initialslow period of fertility decline, 1785–1945, followed by a period of rapid declines,1945–2010, and finally, by a period of slower declines in the future. Conceptual-ized in terms of social change, the argument about slower fertility declines inthe future points out that accelerating rates of change are historically contin-gent processes, subject to changes and reversals.

The general pattern of social change outlined above requires furtherresearch into a series of related questions. Several studies have demonstratedthe effects of linguistic diversity across nations on the pace of changes in fertil-ity. Does the spread of a common language over time confirm these effects? Dothe latecomer and language effects which seem so evident in the case of fertil-ity change apply to other types of social change? Do they apply as well toprocesses like industrialization where organizations make most decisions asthey do to processes like fertility change where individuals make importantdecisions? The research strategy used here looked at historical variations withina single process of social change, fertility decline, for evidence about why social




change accelerates. An alternate approach would involve comparing socialchange processes with and without latecomer efforts. For example, self-conscious political efforts to promote change have marked processes ofindustrialization, but they have not characterized processes of urbanization.Does the same historical process of accelerating social change characterize bothprocesses? A series of controlled comparisons like this one would do much toenhance our understanding of social change.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank S. Philip Morgan, Karen O’Neill, D. Randall Smith,Robert Wood, and the members of the economic sociology seminar at RutgersUniversity for comments on earlier versions of this article. A fellowship fromthe Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgersfacilitated this research.

NOTES

1. The small states were excluded because no measures of family planning effortswere available for these states.

2. In several instances, as for instance with Germany, the boundaries of the datacollection unit (a province or a nation) changed dramatically in the middle ofa times series. In these instances we combined the scores of the new jurisdic-tions in order to make the earlier and later rates for these places comparable.

3. In addition we assembled data on literacy rates and GDP per capita when fertil-ity declines began. The GDP per capita variable did not represent either expla-nation, and it did not predict the pace of fertility declines, so it was droppedfrom the analysis. The literacy variable entered the two stage least squaresanalysis as an instrumental variable.

4. Because the length of observations varies from country to country, each of thetwo groups in Figure 1 has numerous nations for the first two or three decadesafter the onset of fertility decline, and then the number of nations in each groupbegins to decline. The curves end when the number of nations in each groupdrops below five. If we were to continue the curves until there were no moreobservations, it would accord undue influence in the shaping of the curves tonations with the longest periods of decline. The pre-Second World War curvewould, for instance, consist only of measures for France for the last four decades.

5. The precise date of the measure for the ratio of rural to urban fertility ratesdepended on the availability of data. These measures came from a variety of




sources. The 19th century measures came in many instances from dataassembled by the European fertility decline project (Coale and Watkins, 1986).Many of the later estimates came from Demographic and Health Surveysfunded by the United States International Development Agency. A list of all ofthe data sources for this variable is available from the first author.

6. The countries in each of the four groups are as follows:

Group 1: 1785–1900 fertility decline onset: Austria, Belgium, Canada, CzechRep., Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy,Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA.

Group 2: 1900–45 fertility decline onset: Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, China,Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal,Romania, Russia, Spain.

Group 3: 1946–70 onset: Algeria, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,Ecuador, Egypt, Faeroe Islands, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, HongKong, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Martinique, Mauritius, Morocco,Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Taiwan,Tunisia, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Group 4: Post-1970 onset: Bangladesh, Brazil, Botswana, Dominican Republic,El Salvador, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya,Mexico, Namibia, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Papua NewGuinea, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, South Korea,Thailand, Togo, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Vietnam, Zambia.

7. The two outlier nations exhibit extreme linguistic diversity which made it diffi-cult to interpret the effects of the language variable, even in a log transformedversion, when PNG and USSR were in the analysis.

8. These supplementary analyses are available from the first author.

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APPENDIX: SOURCES FOR MEASURES USED IN THEMULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS

Changes in Crude Birth Rates: calculated from crude birth rates reported in theDemographic Yearbooks of the United Nations, 1948–97. For periodsprior to 1948 the data come from the International Historical Statisticsseries.

Changes in Mortality Rates: calculated from crude death rates reported in theDemographic Yearbooks of the United Nations, 1948–97. For periodsprior to 1948 the data come from the International Historical StatisticsSeries.

Family Planning Efforts: the scores for individual developing countries arereported in Ross and Mauldin (1994, 1996)

Literacy Rates: 19th and early 20th century rates were taken from Capel. Morerecent estimates come from United Nations Educational, Scientific, andCultural Organization (UNESCO) ‘World Illiteracy at Mid-century’(1957) or from UNESCO ‘Compendium of Statistics on Illiteracy – 1990Edition’ (1990).

Number of Languages: the number of languages spoken as first languages ineach country comes from the Europa Yearbook (1983).

Rural–Urban Fertility Ratio: the ratios for fertility transitions in 19th centuryEurope came from publications of the Princeton European FertilityProject. The ratios for more recent fertility declines came either fromDemographic Yearbooks or from Demographic and Health Surveysfunded by USAID. A list of sources is available from the first author.

Thomas K. Rudel has studied different aspects of environmental sociology,particularly in Latin America, for most of his professional life. Most recently, heis the author of Tropical Forests: Regional Paths of Destruction and Regenera-tion in the Late Twentieth Century (Columbia, 2005). He is on the faculty in theDepartments of Human Ecology and Sociology at Rutgers University. Address:




Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, 55 Dudley Road, NewBrunswick, NJ 08901–8520, USA. Email: [[email protected]]

Linda Hooper did her undergraduate work at Rutgers University and hasrecently obtained graduate degrees in population sciences from Johns HopkinsUniversity. She currently works as a statistician in the Social and DemographicSection of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva,Switzerland.




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