A set of linked reproductive histories taken from the Spanish town of Aranjuez between 1871 and 1950 is used to address key issues regarding reproductive change during the demographic transition. These include the role of child survival as a stimulus for reproductive change, the use of stopping...

According to the classic demographic transition theory, mortality change was the key factor triggering the decline of fertility. In a recent paper Reher and Sanz-Gimeno studied the mechanisms which played a role in this process with individual longitudinal data for the Spanish town of Aranjuez....