Women, Demography, and Politics: How Lower Fertility Rates Lead to Democracy

Where connections between demography and politics are examined in the literature, it is largely in the context of the effects of male aspects of demography on phenomena such as political violence. This project aims to place the study of demographic variables' influence on politics, particularly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDemography Vol. 55; no. 2; pp. 559 - 586
Main Author Sommer, Udi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Population Association of America (Springer) 01.04.2018
Springer US
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects
Aggression
Birth Rate - trends
Causality
Comparative studies
Democracy
Demographic variables
Demographics
Demography
Developed Countries
Developing Countries
Family Characteristics
Family structure
Females
Fertility
Fertility decline
FERTILITY, GENDER, AND POLICY
Geography
Humans
Hypothesis testing
Income - statistics & numerical data
Medicine/Public Health
Political development
Political violence
Politics
Population Dynamics
Population Economics
Robust control
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Sociology
Violence
Women
Women's Health
Democracy
Fertility rate
Demography and politics
Family structure
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Summary:Where connections between demography and politics are examined in the literature, it is largely in the context of the effects of male aspects of demography on phenomena such as political violence. This project aims to place the study of demographic variables' influence on politics, particularly on democracy, squarely within the scope of political and social sciences, and to focus on the effects of woman-related demographics—namely, fertility rate. I test the hypothesis that demographic variables—female-related predictors, in particular—have an independent effect on political structure. Comparing countries over time, this study finds a growth in democracy when fertility rates decline. In the theoretical framework developed, it is family structure as well as the economic and political status of women that account for this change at the macro and micro levels. Findings based on data for more than 140 countries over three decades are robust when controlling not only for alternative effects but also for reverse causality and data limitations.
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ISSN:0070-3370
1533-7790
DOI:10.1007/s13524-018-0655-x