The Economic and Demographic Transition, Mortality, and Comparative Development

We propose a unified growth theory to investigate the mechanics generating the economic and demographic transition, and the role of mortality differences for comparative development. The framework can replicate the quantitative pat- terns in historical time series data and in contemporaneous cross-country panel data, including the bi-modal distribution of the endogenous variables across coun- tries. The results suggest that differences in extrinsic mortality might explain a substantial part of the observed differences in the timing of the take-off across countries and the worldwide density distribution of the main variables of interest.