The demographic transition - the move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime - is a process that almost every country has already completed or is currently undergoing. Are all demographic transitions equal? Have they changed in speed and shape over time? And, how do they relate to economic development?

To answer these questions, we compiled a dataset of birth and death rates for 186 countries that spans more than 250 years. We use a novel econometric method to identify start and end dates for transitions in birth and death rates. We document that while income per capita at the beginning of these transitions has been roughly constant over time, the average speed of transitions has increased steadily. Also, we report the existence of "demographic contagion": a country's entry into the demographic transition is strongly associated with its neighbors having already started their transitions. Next, we build a quantitative model that accounts for these facts. Our economy is composed of different locations. In each location, parents decide how many children to have and how much to educate them. There is skill-biased technological change that diffuses from the frontier country, Great Britain, to the rest of the world.

This webpage provides the demographic transitions data set. The users can plot the crude death and birth rates, for a single country or a group of countries, and the start and end dates of mortality and fertility transitions assigned by our methodology.

Reference: Fernandez-Villaverde, Jesus, Delventhal, Matt and Nezih Guner. 2021. "Demographic Transitions Across Time and Space." CEPR DP 16708.