Pre-Transition Fertility in Asia: A Comparative-historical Approach

This paper questions the proposition that fertility was invariably high among populations before the fertility transition. By examining factors affecting pre-transition fertility based on the evidence from Japan and India in the pre-World War II period, together with that from England and Germany in the traditional period, it suggests that in most historical populations fertility was below the supposed bio-logical maximum, and that there was a pre-transition rising phase in fertility in countries at both ends of the Eurasian continent. Then the paper asks if the phenomenon of rising fertility really was an obstacle to the onset of fertility transition