Can the speed of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa be accelerated?

Understanding population growth and fertility patterns are essential in achieving sustainable developments. Various fertility models have been suggested in the developed countries but such is lacking in developing countries. This study assessed factors affecting fertility outcomes among Nigerian women using Poisson regression model.
We used Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, 2008 data consisting 33,385 aged 15-49 years. Multi-factors additive Poisson regression models was fitted to respondents’ total children ever born (CEB) to determine best fitted model for predicting fertility at 5%.significance level while other analysis were done using descriptive statistics.

Mean age of respondents was 28.64±9.59 while average CEB was 2.53±2.7 and 3.42±3.1 in urban and rural areas respectively. Women with tertiary education were about 30% time less likely to have as many children as uneducated (IRR=0.73 95% CI:0.70-0.75). Expected number of children per woman is modeled. In average, an uneducated currently married and unemployed woman aged 40-44 years from rural North-East Nigeria with 25-29 years of marriage would have had 8 children (c=7.59±0.01).

Poisson model is suitable for modeling and predicting expected number of children by women using factors such as age, educational, locality
Key word: Fertility, IRR, Poisson

The process by which migration impacts fertility behavior and family planning needs of migrant women in cities is not well understood. This is particularly true in post-conflict settings, which tend to have limited data but patterns of migration that are likely different from non-conflict countries. This paper investigates differences in fertility outcomes and family planning (FP) use between recent migrants and long-term residents in Kinshasa, Africa’s third-largest and fastest growing city. Findings show that migrants have higher unmet need and intention to use than long-term residents, but only slightly, and similar ASFRs. There is no significant difference for current or ever-use of contraception. This still suggests that high rates of migration without increases contraceptive access could contribute to greater increases in unmet need in Kinshasa relative to other areas of the country and that any increases in FP resources might be best spent meeting growing needs in Kinshasa.

Despite large differences in total fertility, there are strong similarities in the patterns of family building across sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper we argue that these patterns of family building and the persistence of high to medium-high fertility regimes across the region can be understood better if the institutional context in which African women’s childbearing occurs is not neglected. In this paper, we argue that historical institutions affecting attitudes towards childbearing, combined with contemporary social, political and economic uncertainty and institutional capriciousness, have inhibited the African fertility transition. Until these institutional dynamics are better understood and engaged with, Africa’s fertility decline will remain slow.

Earlier investigations have shown associations between a woman’s chance of having a child, or various proximate determinants of her fertility, and the socioeconomic resources in the community in which she lives, net of her own resources. This study, which is based on DHS surveys from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, adds to the knowledge about this issue. With a focus on first and higher-order birth rates, four specific questions are addressed. One result is that the negative associations between a woman’s birth rates and the average education in the census enumeration area in which she lives, net of her own education, have remained stable or become stronger over the last decade. Second, these associations are most pronounced among women who score high on indicators of socioeconomic development, which suggests that they may become further strengthened. Third, associations even appear when a fixed-effects approach – based on data from two DHS surveys with GPS coordinates in each country – is employed to control for unobserved constant characteristics of units at a slightly higher level than the census enumeration area. Fourth, local processes seem to be particularly important: the education among women in the province or nearest census enumeration areas is not inversely associated with fertility.

In many sub-Saharan African countries, demand for children or desired family size is high while demand for and use of contraceptives is low thus fertility high. Through community dialogues and information from women of reproductive age, married men, opinion leaders and health worker as key informants to identify the reasons for low uptake of Family Planning services, it was found that lack of awareness, and myths and misconception are some of the key the factors that hinder uptake of Family planning. Some of the myths and misconceptions were; "FP leaves parents childless in case of a calamity because they can’t produce any more- Permanent methods (When children die)". "FP reduces sexual libido among women (Reason why men don’t permit their wives undertake FP)". "FP is a trick by white men (Europeans) to finish off the African race so that they can take over our land". "FP causes women to produce deformed children".
Our people have to be helped to understand the use of the available family planning methods by allaying their fears, many of which are unfounded. Awareness creation and community sensitization interventions should be priority in the family planning programs for an effective reduction of fertility

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are high and individual circumstances are unstable. Given these conditions, some demographers argue that women have difficulty forming long-term fertility plans and thus challenge the utility of reported desires to stop childbearing. But despite these challenges, intentions to stop childbearing have predictive power. We propose that a better assessment of both the empirical and theoretical relevance of fertility intentions requires understanding how intentions change in response to individual circumstances. This paper uses three waves of survey data collected in rural southern Mozambique to study stability and change in the desire to stop childbearing. We apply fixed-effects models to assess the degree to which changes in fertility intentions are shaped by changes in demographic factors, household economic conditions, and health status, controlling for stable individual characteristics. Results suggest that measures of fertility intentions are meaningful, even in unstable high-fertility contexts, and provide further support for the “moving target” model of intentions that has been proposed for low-fertility settings.

We investigate the causal effect of a woman’s years of schooling on giving birth while a teenager using a major educational policy change in Ethiopia in 1994 that abolished school fees. We find that the policy change was associated with a jump in school attendance with women who reached school starting age just after the policy was introduced achieving around 1.3 years of additional education, on average, compared to women who just missed the policy. Using a regression discontinuity approach we find that each additional year of schooling due to the policy lowers the probability of giving birth before age twenty by about 6 percentage points (from a baseline of about 54%). This implies that completing lower primary school (4 years of schooling) reduces the probability of a teenage birth by 0.24. We show that the decline in teen fertility with schooling can be explained by a decline of similar magnitude in the probability that the more educated women are married before age twenty, though there is a somewhat lower decline in the number of educated women reporting that their age at first sex is before age twenty.

Young age at childbearing has been identified as one of the factors perpetuating high fertility in Uganda, which has been attributed to the young age at childbearing. This paper estimated trends and identified the risk factors for young age at childbearing in Uganda. The paper used cross-sectional retrospective data collected by the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys of 2001, 2006 and 2011 on women aged 15-49 years. Survival analysis using the Kaplan-Meier survival function was used at the bivariate level to estimate differentials in the median age at first birth and the Cox’s proportional hazard model to identify significant risk factors of the young age at first birth. As hypothesized, level of education was found to be a significant risk factor of young age at first birth, regardless of age cohorts of women. Other risk factors were being less than 18 years of age at first sex, Muslim, rural residence, living in northern Uganda, lower wealth index and lack of family planning services. Increasing the participation of women in post primary education should be implemented as a broader framework for changing the fertility behaviour of Ugandan women.

From a demographic standpoint, most Western African countries are chiefly characterized by their slow demographic transitions. Fertility levels remain high, estimated at 5.4 children per woman on average. Contraceptive prevalence rates (CPRs) are very low, at less than 10% overall (modern methods) and have stagnated in several countries over the past 10 years. Given this context, the paramount population policy question is whether these countries can accelerate their demographic and, particularly, fertility transitions with the view of capturing their demographic dividend.
The paper, focused on 13 countries, will offer an overview of fertility and contraception trends, based on the Bongaarts model of the proximate determinants. Thereafter, the paper will review the set of policies and strategies that could help accelerate the fertility transition. The paper will also combine the results of the fertility analysis with the examination of the policies and strategies as well as other programmatic interventions specifically geared at reducing fertility. Finally, the paper will offer a “road map” or a set of steps that would permit to increase CPRs by about 1.5 percentage point per year, as compared to 0.5 currently.

Little is known about women in sub-Saharan Africa who desire to limit their future childbearing. Demographic and Health Survey data from 18 countries are analyzed here to better understand the characteristics of women wishing to limit childbearing. Demand for limiting (26 percent of married women) nearly equals that for spacing (31 percent). The mean “demand crossover age” (the average age at which demand to limit births begins to exceed demand to space) is generally around age 33, but in some countries it is as low as 23 or 24. Large numbers of women have exceeded their desired fertility but do not use family planning, citing fear of side effects and health concerns as barriers. Many African women are not only interested in birth spacing; in fact, demand for limiting nearly equals that for spacing. Birth limiting has a greater impact on fertility rates than birth spacing and is a major factor driving the fertility transition. Meeting the growing needs of African women with an intention to limit is essential as they are a unique audience that has long been overlooked and underserved.