The proposition that changes in fertility, mortality and migration rates can only be understood with reference to the broader social system in which demographic change occurs is by now little more than conventional wisdom. Yet despite the considerable theoretical and empirical attention given to these relationships, no central paradigm has emerged that systematically links structural change and demographic behavior in developing countries.

Many accounts of population change amount to an eclectic listing of empirical generalizations. An example is Notestein's (1953) explanation of the demographic transition. In his well-known discussion of fertility, Notestein mentioned no fewer than fifteen different phenomena associated with the decline in the birth rate, ranging from changes in women's consciousness to the impact of the rise of urban-industrial production on the cost of children (see chapter 7). Each element of the argument can be supported by “hard” data. Yet the various fragments hardly add up to an understanding of structural change, nor to a coherent picture of how demographic behavior is embedded in the process of economic growth and development.

Attempts in contemporary demography to model the relationship between population and development are often deficient because they are, unsurprisingly, overly demographic: population variables and the relationships that immediately affect fertility, mortality and migration upstage economic and political concerns, which are typically relegated to the category of background contingencies (Bulatao and Lee 1983; Bongaarts and Potter 1983; Stokes and Schutjer 1984:197).