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Are Rural Areas Holdouts in the Second Demographic Transition?

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A central premise of the first demographic transition theory is that demographic change would occur more slowly in rural than urban areas. Shelley Clark examines trends among rural and urban families in Canada and the United States discussing current differences between rural and urban families.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 30, 2024

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The work discussed focuses on the evolving dynamics of rural families over the past three decades, highlighting a significant lack of understanding in this area as compared to urban families. It examines demographic transitions, particularly the decline in fertility and marriage rates, and contrasts the experiences of rural versus urban families.

Historically, rural families were thought to lag behind urban families in adopting modern family structures, characterized by a higher inclination toward marriage and having children within marriage. However, recent trends indicate a notable shift in rural areas, where there has been a significant retreat from marriage and an increase in cohabitation and non-marital childbearing. This video change is more pronounced in rural than in urban settings, contradicting prior assumptions about traditional family values in rural contexts.

Research reveals that women in rural areas are now more likely to cohabit and have children outside of marriage. While rural women still exhibit higher fertility rates, the gap between rural and urban fertility is narrowing. In Canada, rural women tend to have a notably higher number of children compared to their urban counterparts, unlike in the U.S., where the difference is smaller.

The drivers of these trends differ by country. In Canada, lower ethnic diversity and fewer immigrants in rural areas contribute to different family formation patterns, whereas in the U.S., factors such as poverty and lower educational attainment among women play a significant role in the rise of cohabitation and non-marital births.

The findings suggest that rural families are not in crisis; rather, they are experiencing a transformation that reflects broader societal shifts. The data challenges prevailing narratives about rural families and highlights the need for tailored policies to address the unique challenges and dynamics of rural family life, particularly in light of recent economic hardships. The research calls for a deeper understanding of rural family structures and the development of more context-specific policy interventions.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This really, this work focuses obviously on rural families

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and looking at changes over the last three decades.

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And that's mainly

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because, you know,

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I realized we really don't know much about rural families

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and what has happened.

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Um, and that was a bit surprising

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because as demographers, we used to care a lot about rural

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families and differences between rural and urban families.

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The work really traces initially back to, the original,

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demographic transition theory,

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which has now become called the first

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Demographic Transition theory.

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And this refers

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to the really precipitous decline in fertility

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and mortality rates that occurred pretty much across western

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countries in the sort of mid to late 18 hundreds.

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And demographers have long been interested in kind

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of understanding, you know, what drove this decline.

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In particular, why was this decline in fertility

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where women used to have more than 10 kids

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and then they started having, you know, five and four

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and three and two, and,

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and they wanted to know what was causing this.

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And one of the most common explanations that's been given,

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is that it was due to basically industrialization

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and in particular the rise of the quote,

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urban industrial Society.

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And the idea was that, with industrialization,

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more people moved to urban areas.

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And we used to have a lot of rural families

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where they were primarily based on agricultural production.

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And so getting married early

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and having lots of kids was really beneficial to do.

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Whereas once we had urban families, well,

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in those cases they were mainly wage employees.

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They were mainly based in factory work,

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and so just individual labor mattered

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and having lots of kids actually might be quite expensive,

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so maybe you didn't wanna have so many kids.

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And so early work

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by demographers about this first demographic transition

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really focused on, really focused on these urban

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and rural contrasts in family life and, and children.

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But then now demographers are interested in

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what we call sometimes the second demographic transition,

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which we first did a series of changes

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where we don't just have low fertility,

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we have very low fertility, we're now

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below replacement levels.

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So we're below two children,

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really 2.1 children, per woman.

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Uh, in the United States, for example,

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we're at 1.8 children per woman.

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Uh, in Canada we're at 1.3, which is a record low

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and obviously well below replacement levels.

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And then there are other changes

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that are occurring in Western countries

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pertaining to the family.

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Uh, in particular there's this, retreat from marriage.

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So increasingly, adults

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and young adults are choosing, yeah, you know,

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I think I'm gonna wait to get married,

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or maybe I'm not gonna marry at all.

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Or maybe instead of getting married,

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I'm gonna form a cohabiting partnership with, with someone.

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And then the third major change in families now is

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that there's become this disconnect

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Between marriages.

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So whereas by

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and large having children who's really confined to

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a married couple, we're now seeing a growing proportion

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of kids that are being born

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and raised, either by single parents

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or in these, cohabiting families.

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And so, so those are the three major changes going on.

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And in the prior research, we see a lot of studies

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that look at and show that, you know,

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but there's differences in who's making those changes by,

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particularly by women's education.

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Um, we also see big differences by income level.

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We see differences across race, we see differences

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by immigrant status.

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But what people hadn't looked at was,

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are we also seeing rural and urban differences here?

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I think mainly the reason they hadn't looked at that is

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'cause the assumption was, well, you know,

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in the first demographic transition, rural areas kind

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of trailed behind urban areas.

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And, you know, eventually fertility fell a little,

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but not as much and changes happened,

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but they, they sort of lagged behind.

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And there's this kind of lingering idea that

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that's still going on in rural areas.

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There's this view that, you know,

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rural families are more traditional,

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rural adults hold more traditional values about wanting

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to get married, wanting to have kids.

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You see this portrayed a lot actually in like media accounts

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or even recent popular literature about rural families.

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Um, but we don't really know whether or not it's true.

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And so this, this work that I looked at was trying

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to sort of assess, you know, what has really happened

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to rural, families, especially in the last,

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the last few decades prior to

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or right around, 2000, the early two thousands,

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you know, probably the media accounts in the,

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and the general assumptions

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that demographers were making were, were fairly accurate.

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Rural families were, quote, more traditional,

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they were more likely to marry, they had more kids,

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they're more likely to have the kids within marriage.

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Uh, so, you know, it was, it seemed

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to pretty much fall in line with expectations.

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But the last like 20, 25 years have been pretty rough in

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rural areas, especially in the us we saw a lot

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of economic decline due to

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economic restructuring due to globalization.

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Um, also the, the great recession

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of 2008 really hit rural areas a lot harder.

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And so, you know, in many ways this kind

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of undermined a lot of rural economies and economies and,

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and social networks that used

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to be really robust really started to weaken.

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And we know from prior studies that, you know,

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disadvantaged groups, say women with less education

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or lower incomes, those are actually the women

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that are most likely to cohabit

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or to have children outside of marriage.

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And so for me, I was like, well, let's actually look

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and see what happens.

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And in fact, what I did show, I, along with my colleagues

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who worked with me on this research, what we showed is

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that, we did see a,

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a stronger retreat from marriage in rural areas

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than in urban areas.

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So this was kind of offset by this sort

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of growing cohabitation where you see women deciding

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to cohabit rather than get married.

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Um, they also, rural women also started having more

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and more of their children outside of marriage.

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Um, and while similar trends were happening in urban areas,

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they weren't as, as strong or as steep.

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And so, you know, today, basically what we find is

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that in rural areas in both Canada

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and in the United States,

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rural women are actually more likely

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to be in cohabiting unions

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and they're more likely to have

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children outside of marriage.

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Um, which we think of as being sort of tradition markers of,

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being untraditional

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or sort of modern family formations, which are,

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are now more common in rural areas.

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The one place you would say rural families have stayed more,

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traditional

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or sort of as expected is

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that we do still see higher fertility rates in rural areas,

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but these differences are really quite small.

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In the United States,

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rural women only only have slightly more children,

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in rural US than, in urban us.

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Uh, but in Canada, these differences have sustained

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and they've maintained themselves

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as being quite large, rural women.

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In Canada, about 50% have about 50% more children,

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than do urban women.

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And so, we really don't understand sort of what is,

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allowing them to sustain these relatively

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high fertility rates.

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Um, while at the same time a growing proportion

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of those kids are now being born

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and raised, outside of marriage.

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But we did wanna look into both why, you know,

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why is cohabitation on the rise

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and why also is, is, are more children being born

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outside of marriage,

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in the rural areas in both the US and Canada.

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And we get actually quite different answers as

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to what's driving these trends in Canada

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and in the us in Canada.

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And I think this is actually quite interesting.

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It actually doesn't have anything to do with,

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economic differences or education differences

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or even differences in religiosity.

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What it actually has to do with is that in rural areas,

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they tend to have less ethnic diversity.

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They also, especially in in Canada,

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they have far fewer immigrants

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who live in rural areas than urban areas.

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And in Canada, most

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of the immigrants come from Asian countries.

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And in Asian countries it's actually quite uncommon either

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to cohabit or to have children outside of marriage.

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And so what's actually driving these differences in Canada

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is the fact that you have more immigrants in urban areas

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who are not cohabiting

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and not having children outside

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of marriage than you do in rural areas.

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Whereas in the US you, you find a very different story.

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You do actually see that what seems

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to be driving these trends is the higher, levels

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of poverty, you know, lower levels of income

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and particularly lower levels of women's education

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that are associated with, being more likely

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to have children outside of marriage

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and, forming cohabiting, unions.

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So you get very different explanations in the two countries

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despite similar trends.

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In terms of main conclusions, I think people, some people,

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and there have been sort, sort of popular literatures

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around sort of, you know, our rural families in crisis

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and the rise of sort of overall resentment and anger

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and rage in rural areas.

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And I actually think these findings have

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something to say about this.

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You know, in Canada I think it's pretty clear rural families

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aren't in crisis, but in the US there's more reason

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to be a little bit concerned.

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Um, it does sort of seem that, that much of the reason

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for this rise is probably not due for out of preferences

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or out of changing ideals or norms.

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And in fact, qualitative research on,

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with young adults in, rural parts of the US suggests

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that they still really want to get married.

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They still really think it's important

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that you are married when you have children.

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But the fact that there's now this disconnect between

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what their ideals are about families

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and what they're able to obtain,

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I think could actually be an important source

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of frustration, in many of these rural communities.

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Uh, and it also points out, I think, to the fact that,

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I mean, obviously you, you hear,

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so we're gonna strengthen the family

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and a lot of sort of, you know, politicians

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and policy makers, that's always one of their,

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their objectives.

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But that a lot of the policies really designed to strengthen

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and assist families, need to be taking into account

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how different contexts matter more.

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And they're, you know, these sort

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of blanket policies probably aren't gonna be equally helpful

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across different contexts.

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So if you think of something like,

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subsidizing childcare, making childcare more accessible,

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this seems like a great idea,

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but it is far easier to do

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that in an urban area than in a rural area.

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And so there might be different policies

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and applications that are necessary,

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for rural families than for urban families.

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And it's clear that a lot of the sort

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of lingering economic impacts in,

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rural areas have had a really, hard consequence

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for a lot of these, these families.

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And I think it helps us, encourage us to do more research

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to understand what we could do to better meet the needs

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of rural families,

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and to maybe develop policies that are better suited

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for them.

00:00 - This really, this work focuses obviously on rural families and looking at changes over the last three decades. And that's mainly because, you know, I realized we really don't know much about rural families and what has happened.

00:13 - and that was a bit surprising because as demographers, we used to care a lot about rural families and differences between rural and urban families. The work really traces initially back to, the original, demographic transition theory, which has now become called the first Demographic Transition theory. And this refers to the really precipitous decline in fertility and mortality rates that occurred pretty much across western

00:41 - countries in the sort of mid to late 18 hundreds. And demographers have long been interested in kind of understanding, you know, what drove this decline. In particular, why was this decline in fertility where women used to have more than 10 kids and then they started having, you know, five and four and three and two, and, and they wanted to know what was causing this. And one of the most common explanations that's been given, is that it was due to basically industrialization

01:08 - and in particular the rise of the quote, urban industrial Society. And the idea was that, with industrialization, more people moved to urban areas. And we used to have a lot of rural families where they were primarily based on agricultural production. And so getting married early and having lots of kids was really beneficial to do. Whereas once we had urban families, well, in those cases they were mainly wage employees.

01:36 - They were mainly based in factory work, and so just individual labor mattered and having lots of kids actually might be quite expensive, so maybe you didn't wanna have so many kids. And so early work by demographers about this first demographic transition really focused on, really focused on these urban and rural contrasts in family life and, and children. But then now demographers are interested in what we call sometimes the second demographic transition,

02:05 - which we first did a series of changes where we don't just have low fertility, we have very low fertility, we're now below replacement levels. So we're below two children, really 2.1 children, per woman. in the United States, for example, we're at 1.8 children per woman. in Canada we're at 1.3, which is a record low and obviously well below replacement levels.

02:29 - And then there are other changes that are occurring in Western countries pertaining to the family. in particular there's this, retreat from marriage. So increasingly, adults and young adults are choosing, yeah, you know, I think I'm gonna wait to get married, or maybe I'm not gonna marry at all. Or maybe instead of getting married, I'm gonna form a cohabiting partnership with, with someone.

02:52 - And then the third major change in families now is that there's become this disconnect Between marriages. So whereas by and large having children who's really confined to a married couple, we're now seeing a growing proportion of kids that are being born and raised, either by single parents or in these, cohabiting families. And so, so those are the three major changes going on.

03:18 - And in the prior research, we see a lot of studies that look at and show that, you know, but there's differences in who's making those changes by, particularly by women's education. we also see big differences by income level. We see differences across race, we see differences by immigrant status. But what people hadn't looked at was, are we also seeing rural and urban differences here? I think mainly the reason they hadn't looked at that is

03:46 - 'cause the assumption was, well, you know, in the first demographic transition, rural areas kind of trailed behind urban areas. And, you know, eventually fertility fell a little, but not as much and changes happened, but they, they sort of lagged behind. And there's this kind of lingering idea that that's still going on in rural areas. There's this view that, you know, rural families are more traditional,

04:11 - rural adults hold more traditional values about wanting to get married, wanting to have kids. You see this portrayed a lot actually in like media accounts or even recent popular literature about rural families. but we don't really know whether or not it's true. And so this, this work that I looked at was trying to sort of assess, you know, what has really happened to rural, families, especially in the last, the last few decades prior to or right around, 2000, the early two thousands,

04:44 - you know, probably the media accounts in the, and the general assumptions that demographers were making were, were fairly accurate. Rural families were, quote, more traditional, they were more likely to marry, they had more kids, they're more likely to have the kids within marriage. so, you know, it was, it seemed to pretty much fall in line with expectations. But the last like 20, 25 years have been pretty rough in rural areas, especially in the us we saw a lot

05:10 - of economic decline due to economic restructuring due to globalization. also the, the great recession of 2008 really hit rural areas a lot harder. And so, you know, in many ways this kind of undermined a lot of rural economies and economies and, and social networks that used to be really robust really started to weaken. And we know from prior studies that, you know, disadvantaged groups, say women with less education

05:39 - or lower incomes, those are actually the women that are most likely to cohabit or to have children outside of marriage. And so for me, I was like, well, let's actually look and see what happens. And in fact, what I did show, I, along with my colleagues who worked with me on this research, what we showed is that, we did see a, a stronger retreat from marriage in rural areas than in urban areas.

06:04 - So this was kind of offset by this sort of growing cohabitation where you see women deciding to cohabit rather than get married. they also, rural women also started having more and more of their children outside of marriage. and while similar trends were happening in urban areas, they weren't as, as strong or as steep. And so, you know, today, basically what we find is that in rural areas in both Canada and in the United States,

06:31 - rural women are actually more likely to be in cohabiting unions and they're more likely to have children outside of marriage. which we think of as being sort of tradition markers of, being untraditional or sort of modern family formations, which are, are now more common in rural areas. The one place you would say rural families have stayed more, traditional

06:55 - or sort of as expected is that we do still see higher fertility rates in rural areas, but these differences are really quite small. In the United States, rural women only only have slightly more children, in rural US than, in urban us. but in Canada, these differences have sustained and they've maintained themselves as being quite large, rural women. In Canada, about 50% have about 50% more children,

07:22 - than do urban women. And so, we really don't understand sort of what is, allowing them to sustain these relatively high fertility rates. while at the same time a growing proportion of those kids are now being born and raised, outside of marriage. But we did wanna look into both why, you know, why is cohabitation on the rise and why also is, is, are more children being born

07:47 - outside of marriage, in the rural areas in both the US and Canada. And we get actually quite different answers as to what's driving these trends in Canada and in the us in Canada. And I think this is actually quite interesting. It actually doesn't have anything to do with, economic differences or education differences or even differences in religiosity. What it actually has to do with is that in rural areas,

08:12 - they tend to have less ethnic diversity. They also, especially in in Canada, they have far fewer immigrants who live in rural areas than urban areas. And in Canada, most of the immigrants come from Asian countries. And in Asian countries it's actually quite uncommon either to cohabit or to have children outside of marriage. And so what's actually driving these differences in Canada is the fact that you have more immigrants in urban areas

08:39 - who are not cohabiting and not having children outside of marriage than you do in rural areas. Whereas in the US you, you find a very different story. You do actually see that what seems to be driving these trends is the higher, levels of poverty, you know, lower levels of income and particularly lower levels of women's education that are associated with, being more likely to have children outside of marriage

09:04 - and, forming cohabiting, unions. So you get very different explanations in the two countries despite similar trends. In terms of main conclusions, I think people, some people, and there have been sort, sort of popular literatures around sort of, you know, our rural families in crisis and the rise of sort of overall resentment and anger and rage in rural areas. And I actually think these findings have something to say about this.

09:34 - You know, in Canada I think it's pretty clear rural families aren't in crisis, but in the US there's more reason to be a little bit concerned. it does sort of seem that, that much of the reason for this rise is probably not due for out of preferences or out of changing ideals or norms. And in fact, qualitative research on, with young adults in, rural parts of the US suggests that they still really want to get married. They still really think it's important

10:03 - that you are married when you have children. But the fact that there's now this disconnect between what their ideals are about families and what they're able to obtain, I think could actually be an important source of frustration, in many of these rural communities. and it also points out, I think, to the fact that, I mean, obviously you, you hear, so we're gonna strengthen the family and a lot of sort of, you know, politicians

10:29 - and policy makers, that's always one of their, their objectives. But that a lot of the policies really designed to strengthen and assist families, need to be taking into account how different contexts matter more. And they're, you know, these sort of blanket policies probably aren't gonna be equally helpful across different contexts. So if you think of something like, subsidizing childcare, making childcare more accessible,

10:53 - this seems like a great idea, but it is far easier to do that in an urban area than in a rural area. And so there might be different policies and applications that are necessary, for rural families than for urban families. And it's clear that a lot of the sort of lingering economic impacts in, rural areas have had a really, hard consequence for a lot of these, these families.

11:18 - And I think it helps us, encourage us to do more research to understand what we could do to better meet the needs of rural families, and to maybe develop policies that are better suited for them.

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