Philip Kreager, Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill, Tengku Syawila Fithry, Vita Priantina Dewi, Dyah Rahayuningtyas
The enduring heterogeneity of modern fertility poses a challenge to demographic modelling, as it requires study of variation within and between the many sub-populations that make up society. it also requires constituent groups being conceptualised as existing at different levels of social organisation (e.g. socio-economic strata, ethnicities, labour force sectors, kin and family networks), and specification of relationships and overlaps between these sub-populations. The network processes that build population and social structures compound the difficulty because, in their normal functioning, they are not closed population units of the kind that formal quantitative analysis normally employs. A different compositional demography is required. data arising from a longitudinal, multi-site study of Indonesian communities provides an opportunity to explore how models of fertility variation over time may be constructed. The open and shifting character of local networks is described in terms of three overlapping types of kindred. Ethnography and randomised sample surveys together enable a model of socio-economic levels to be constructed and interpreted that takes account of network flexibility. uses of the model include identification of conceptual and substantive deficiencies in a number of conventional demographic measures and models. Evidence of differences between networks and between levels show the continuing diversity of indonesia's fertility transition, and the need to question the anticipated continuation of declines. © 2020 Editions Belin et Herscher. All rights reserved.
University of Oxford, United Kingdom; University of Southampton, United Kingdom; Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia; Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia