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Title: The Demand Side of Africa's Demographic Transition: Desired Fertility, Wealth, and Jobs
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2022
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Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for around 40% of projected global births over the next 80 years. To investigate the roots of persistently high fertility rates across the region, I assemble micro data from 192 Demographic and Health Surveys covering 66 low-and-middle-income countries and document three key facts. First, women's fertility ideals and intentions are, on average, substantially higher in SSA than other low-and-middle-income regions. This gap is particularly large among poorer households: the socioeconomic gradient in desired fertility is twice as steep (more negative) on the sub-continent. Second, poorer women are also significantly less likely to work for a wage in SSA, where there exists a robust negative relationship between female wage work prevalence and desired fertility across provinces. Third, exploiting within-SSA variation across 25 countries, I find that increases in female salaried employment opportunities at the province level are associated with a flattening of this gradient over time, conditional on a rich set of covariates. These findings provide suggestive evidence that the nature of SSA's occupational change process may be an important contributor to the region's distinct fertility transition.
Url: https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/eopp/eopp71.pdf
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Authors: Zipfel, Céline
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Data Collections: IPUMS Global Health - DHS
Topics: Fertility and Mortality, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare, Work, Family, and Time
Countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe