Theory and explanation in demography: The case of low fertility in Europe

Elspeth Graham

doi:10.1080/00324728.2021.1971742

Abstract

In the 50th anniversary edition of Population Studies, John Hobcraft commented that demographers spend too little time trying to explain the phenomena they measure and describe. A quarter of a century on, this paper looks at the state of theory and explanation in contemporary demography. I ask how demographers have approached the task of explanation since Hobcraft’s comment, grounding the discussion in the mainstream literature on low fertility in Europe. Using selected examples, I critically review macro- and micro-level approaches to explanation, highlighting some of the philosophical problems that each encounters. I argue that different conceptions of what demography is, and the explanatory language fertility researchers use, lead to differences in explanatory strategies that are rarely explicitly recognized. I also consider how critical theories challenge demographers to think in new ways. Despite the increasing attention paid to theory and explanation, I conclude that more engagement with the philosophy of social sciences is needed before fertility researchers can legitimately claim their studies do as much to explain and understand as to quantify and describe.

Highlights

It is still, I believe, a fair criticism of most of the profession that we spend too little time trying to explain and to understand, rather than to quantify and to describe (Hobcraft 1996, p. 488).In the 50th anniversary edition of Population Studies, John Hobcraft reviewed work on fertility in England and Wales and noted that most analyses were ‘extremely data-bound’ (Hobcraft 1996, p. 488)
Balbo et al.’s (2013) review of research on fertility in advanced societies, on the other hand, is organized according to ‘determinants’ of fertility, which include women’s education. They identify key determinants operating at three analytical levels: the macro level, the meso level, and the micro level
There is a vast literature on low fertility in Europe and I have been necessarily selective in the choice of examples that best illustrate my arguments

Summary

A Journal of Demography

In the 50th anniversary edition of Population Studies, John Hobcraft commented that demographers spend too little time trying to explain the phenomena they measure and describe. I ask how demographers have approached the task of explanation since Hobcraft’s comment, grounding the discussion in the mainstream literature on low fertility in Europe. Despite the increasing attention paid to theory and explanation, I conclude that more engagement with the philosophy of social sciences is needed before fertility researchers can legitimately claim their studies do as much to explain and understand as to quantify and describe

Introduction

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Conclusion