Beyond Economics and Culture: A Demographic Perspective on Contraceptive Theory

Abstract Theories of contraception and fertility are currently dominated by economic and cultural arguments. A demographic perspective can usefully expand these theories through “addition,” “explication,” and “reconciliation.” The addition is about drawing attention to salient demographic forces that have previously been underconsidered whether these forces operate at the macro, meso, or microlevels. Explication is about adding explanatory flesh to proximate economic or cultural influences, which can themselves result from more fundamental demographic changes. Finally, reconciliation is about moving beyond an “economy ‐OR‐ culture” binary to seek complementarities and synergies. Decomposition methods inspired by a demographic perspective help such reconciliation. They offer handy empirical tools for assessing how economic, cultural, and demographic forces jointly shape changes in national rates of contraception, and how their contributions may change over time. Thus, demographic perspectives are not offered as a substitute but as an avenue to integrate cultural, economic, and demographic perspectives and to foster richer contextual analysis.