Volume 33 - Article 47 | Pages 1281–1296  

Education stalls and subsequent stalls in African fertility: A descriptive overview

By Anne Goujon, Wolfgang Lutz, Samir KC

Abstract

Background: Recent stalls in fertility decline have been observed in a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and so far no plausible common reason has been identified in the literature. This paper develops the hypothesis that these fertility stalls could be associated with stalls in the progress of education among the women of the relevant cohorts, possibly resulting partly from the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the 1980s.

Methods: We descriptively link the change in the education composition of successive cohorts of young women in sub-Saharan Africa and the recent fertility stalls. We use reconstructed data on population by age, gender, and level of education from www.wittgenstein centre.org/dataexplorer, and fertility rates from the United Nations.

Results: In most sub-Saharan African countries, we observe that the same countries that had fertility stalls had a stall in the progress of education, particularly for young women who were of primary school age during the 1980s, when most of the countries were under structural adjustment. Conversely, stalls in fertility are less common in countries that did not have an education stall, possibly in relation to SAPs.

Conclusions: The results point to the possibility of a link between the recent fertility stalls and discontinuities in the improvement of the education of the relevant cohorts, which in turn could be related to the SAPs in the 1980s. This descriptive finding now needs to be corroborated through more detailed cohort-specific fertility analysis. If the education-fertility link can be further established, it will have important implications for the projections of population growth in affected countries.

Author's Affiliation

• Anne Goujon - Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna), Austria EMAIL
• Wolfgang Lutz - Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna), Austria EMAIL
• Samir KC - Shanghai University, China EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age, and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050
Volume 22 - Article 15

A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11

A Bayesian model for the reconstruction of education- and age-specific fertility rates: An application to African and Latin American countries
Volume 49 - Article 31

Assessing the demographic impact of migration on the working-age population across European territories
Volume 46 - Article 9

Exploring the fertility trend in Egypt
Volume 37 - Article 32

Ageing dynamics of a human-capital-specific population: A demographic perspective
Volume 31 - Article 44

How does education change the relationship between fertility and age-dependency under environmental constraints? A long-term simulation exercise
Volume 30 - Article 16

Very long range global population scenarios to 2300 and the implications of sustained low fertility
Volume 28 - Article 39

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Left behind single in the partnering market? Entry into cohabiting unions by women and men with low educational attainment across regions of Europe, cohorts 1960 to 1985
Volume 51 - Article 43    | Keywords: cohabitation, education, Europe, European Social Survey, event history analysis, logistic regression, marginalization, partner selection, singlehood, union formation

Is single parenthood increasingly an experience of less-educated mothers? A European comparison over five decades
Volume 51 - Article 34    | Keywords: age, children, cross-national comparison, education, Europe, family life course, inequality, single motherhood

Children under 5 in polygynous households in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000 to 2020
Volume 51 - Article 32    | Keywords: children, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), family demography, polygyny, sub-Saharan Africa

A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11    | Keywords: age dependency, education, international migration, migration, modelling, population projection, projections

Using Respondent-Driven Sampling to measure abortion safety in restrictive contexts: Results from Kaya (Burkina Faso) and Nairobi (Kenya)
Volume 50 - Article 47    | Keywords: induced abortion, respondents-driven samples, social networks, sub-Saharan Africa