03. The 'Second Demographic Transition' - new forms of family
Demographic Trends and Problems of the Modern World
English - April 26, 2012 17:42 - 54 minutes - 31.2 MBCourses Education Science Social Sciences Homepage Download IPFS Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Professor David Coleman from Dept of Social Policy, University of Oxford, gives a talk from his "Demographic Trends and Problems of the Modern World" series talking about the 'Second Demographic Transition'. The early 20th century was a time of very low divorce rates and of births outside marriage. Couples married late and many never married. In Western Europe, and the English-speaking world, all that changed after the 1960s; Cohabitation, divorce, births outside marriage made families much more diverse. The theory of the 'Second demographic transition' explains these trends as the result of new individual autonomy in a society now highly educated, secular and prosperous, with welfare arrangements supporting a variety of family types. As prosperity and education become globalised, the theory predicts that this diversity of behaviour will also be globalised. The lecture examines its scope and sustainability.