1. The theory’s most influential progenitor, Frank Notestein, was aware of its empirical limitations by the early 1950s: D. Hodgson, ‘Demography as social science and policy science’, Population and Development Review 9 (1983): 1–34, p. 12,
2. citing F.W. Notestein, ‘Economic problems of population change’, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Agricultural Economists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953).
3. For a conceptual critique, see S. Szreter, ‘The idea of demographic transition and the study of fertility change: a critical intellectual history’, Population and Development Review 19 (1993): 659–701;
4. and S. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Ch. 1 and Ch. 10. On contemporary mortality declines in poor countries,
5. see S.B. Halstead, J.A. Walsh, and K.S. Warren (eds), Good Health at Low Cost (New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1985).