Are Rural Areas Holdouts in the Second Demographic Transition? Evidence From Canada and the United States

A central premise of the first demo graphic tran sition the ory is that demographic change would occur more slowly in rural than urban areas. Few stud ies, how ever, have inves ti gated whether rural areas remain hold outs during the sec ond demo graphic tran sition. To address this gap, this study (1) examines trends among rural and urban fami lies in Canada and the United States over a 30year period and (2) determines whether compo si tional differences in demo graphic, socio eco nomic, and reli gious factors explain current differences between rural and urban fami lies. We find that rural Canadian women continue to have, on average, 0.6 more chil dren than urban women. However, rural fami lies do not trail behind urban fami lies on any other indi cator of family change. In fact, rural women in both countries are now signifi cantly more likely to cohabit and roughly 10 percent age points more likely to have chil dren out side of marriage than urban women. These differences are largely explained by lower lev els of education and income among rural Ameri can women and fewer immi grants in rural Canada. Examining family change through a rural-urban lens fills important empirical gaps and yields novel insights into current debates on the fundamental causes of on going family change in highincome countries.