The aim of this study is to investigate whether diffusion contributed to the geography and the speed of the fertility transition. To this end, we assembled a new and unique dataset from historical sources in Belgium containing yearly information on fertility at the municipality level and a range of structural and cultural indicators over 47 years (1887–1934). We use this dataset in diffusion models based on multilevel event-history analysis. We find that diffusion between neighboring places influenced the geography of the fertility transition only in its early stages; and diffusion accelerated the speed at which municipalities initiated fertility decline at the onset of the transition. We argue that, in the early stages of the transition, the bulk of people's interactions was confined to their own communities and neighboring places and, as such, new ideas, attitudes, and information about fertility would spread among adjacent areas. Later on, since the turn of the twentieth century, the way people interacted in space was transformed by the growing urbanization, the development of transportation infrastructure and labor migration. In this new context, opportunities for social learning were less constrained by space.

中文翻译：

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扩散对比利时生育率转变的贡献（1887-1934）

本研究的目的是调查扩散是否对生育率转变的地理和速度有贡献。为此，我们从比利时的历史资料中收集了一个新的独特数据集，其中包含 47 年（1887-1934 年）的市政层面的年度生育率信息以及一系列结构和文化指标。我们在基于多级事件历史分析的扩散模型中使用此数据集。我们发现邻近地​​区之间的扩散仅在早期阶段影响生育率转变的地理；和扩散加速了城市在转型开始时开始生育率下降的速度。我们认为，在转型的早期阶段，人们的大部分互动仅限于他们自己的社区和邻近地区，并且，因此，关于生育的新思想、态度和信息将在邻近地区传播。后来，自二十世纪之交以来，随着城市化进程的推进、交通基础设施的发展和劳动力的迁移，人们在空间中的互动方式发生了变化。在这种新环境中，社会学习的机会不受空间的限制。