All that tells me is that someone likes normal distribution charts. It describes the concept but I still have no idea what OP is talking about. What started in France in the 1800s and continues in America today?
I feel the Wikipedia article is pretty clear. It refers to a repeated pattern of changes in births, deaths, technological change, and industrialization. The pattern can be seen in many countries, with various timing-offsets and rates.
It has nothing to do with any particular ethnicity. Insofar as "immigration" comes into play, it refers to economic demand for labor as the population-bump people exit the labor pool.
I'm trying to figure out what changes the OP claimed are being driven by this. Birth-rate-over-time changes happen everywhere and have throughout history, but apparently this is now driving major change?
1. Stross is trying to tie many events to a change from fossil fuels to solar power, but stronger drivers lie elsewhere.
2. It's better-explained by population dynamics, involving medical technology, mortality and longevity, contraceptives, the shifting balance of workers to retirees, etc.
3. [Charitable-reading effort increases here] These trends involved are old and multi-generational, arguably going back to the industrial revolution. As a casual way to show a very-long-ago datapoint, there are arguments/research about a secularizing France's odd population slump back in the 1700s, which predates the widespread use of fossil fuels.
> Birth-rate-over-time changes happen everywhere and have throughout history
If you look at a world population chart (logarithmic scale, naturally) [0] it becomes clear something in the last few hundred years caused a deviation from the old trend.
Stross might argue the trigger was fossil-fuels, others would argue the trigger was a change in human-capital from medicine/nutrition, perhaps a third group would argue both are inextricably intertwined.
