Urbanization and citizenship: enriching the scope of 'policy' in the fertility transition

The role of urbanization in fertility decline has been the object of much academic discussion. Earlier studies had almost unanimously agreed that since urban fertility rates were systematically lower than rural fertility rates, then there must be something about urban areas in general that induces lower fertility. Thus, urbanization was considered a key process through which development accelerated fertility decline. Later, in a significant departure from the generalized assumptions made by earlier demographers, critics have tended to neglect the role of urbanization in fertility decline, or else to deny its influence altogether. Given the uncertainties present in the literature about the relationship of urbanization and fertility decline, and the lack of suitable and timely data to measure these relationships properly on a worldwide scale, the objective of this paper is to apply a statistical model that assumes a structure where urbanization has direct and indirect effects on TFR decline. Despite the enormous variety of situations found, the results of a structured model at country level suggest that urbanization does have a significant and large influence on both fertility and on other factors that affect fertility decline. An analysis of a case study on the Brazilian data is also presented.