• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Navigating the Poles
    • New Security Broadcast
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • What’s Behind West and Central Africa’s Youthful Demographics? High Desired Family Size

    May 11, 2015 By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
    Ghana mother

    Sub-Saharan Africa is often characterized as an outlier in terms of population dynamics and reproductive health. While women are having fewer children around the world, even prompting some places to begin worrying about aging populations, the demographic transition is proceeding more slowly in Africa. Fertility rates in North and Southern Africa have declined to around three children per woman, but the three other sub-regions of the continent – East, Central, and West Africa – retain much higher fertility, between five and six children per woman. Whether, and how quickly, fertility rates decline in these regions over the next few decades will in large part determine the peak of world population. These regions’ demographic trajectories also have important implications for health, governance, food security, economic development, land use, climate vulnerability, and even security.

    Every context is different, but an analysis conducted for 15 countries in West Africa, 8 countries in Central Africa, and 14 countries in East Africa using the most recent available data from the Demographic and Health Survey program and United Nations Population Division illustrates some broad trends. Demographic paths are moving in different directions in the three regions, with change likely to come slowest in West Africa.

    Bucking a Trend

    Many of the factors directly affecting fertility rates are similar across the three regions. For example, the average age of marriage for women is 18.5 years for West Africa, 18.9 for Central Africa, and 19.0 for East Africa. The key differences are in use of family planning and individual preferences about family size. East African countries have a much higher average contraceptive prevalence rate – 35 percent for modern methods – than those of Central (16 percent) and West Africa (13 percent).

    Madsen-Fig1

    Family planning use has increased markedly in several East African countries, such as Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda. Newly released data from the Demographic and Health Survey and PMA2020 programs show more than 50 percent of married women in Kenya use modern contraception, and fertility has dropped below four children per woman from more than five just 10 years ago.

    Meanwhile, countries in West Africa show some of the lowest contraceptive prevalence rates in the world. As measured by recent Demographic and Health Surveys, modern contraceptive prevalence is at or below 10 percent in Benin, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria.

    Although many interrelated factors are at play, fertility preferences are a major contributor to low use of family planning in West Africa. In other regions, efforts to expand family planning availability coincided with changing social attitudes. Women and couples began to prefer smaller families, likely due to improved child survival and female education and empowerment, spurring increased demand for contraception. But women and couples in West and Central Africa have retained a desire to have larger families. This suggests that while fertility in East Africa may show further decline in the near term, as evidenced by recent trends in Kenya and other countries, Central and West Africa are unlikely to follow a similar path in the near future.

    Fertility Behavior and Preferences

    Two indicators demonstrate how fertility preferences differ across West, Central, and East Africa. The ideal number of children is a hypothetical construct based on asking a woman how many children she would have if she could go back in time and choose the exact number. It is an imperfect measure because women are sometimes unwilling to provide a number lower than their actual number of children (thus implying that some of those children were unwanted) but still useful in gauging general preferences about family size.

    Madsen-Fig2

    There is a clear and distinctively different pattern in ideal number of children across the sub-Saharan African regions. In East Africa, women have an average of 5.3 children but say that their ideal family size is 4.6. Clearly, women are, on average, having more children than they would prefer. However, West and Central African women say that in an ideal world, their families would be even larger than they are: 5.9 children compared to 5.3 for West Africa and 6.0 compared to 5.4 for Central. Married women in Niger describe an ideal family size of 10 children – and this number has been increasing over time.

    Ideal family size should not be taken literally. It may reflect social or cultural norms that favor large families, while the economic and other constraints that individual families and women face in raising children have greater influence in actual fertility decisions. Still, the very high ideal family size in West and Central Africa is an important factor in shaping fertility behavior. Across the continent, there is a clear positive relationship between ideal family size and actual fertility.

    West and Central African women say in an ideal world their families would be even larger

    A second indicator that demonstrates how fertility preferences differ across the regions is the percentage of married women who say they want to have no more children. This measure removes the potential bias of ideal family size, as women are only asked to report the desirability of more children than they already have. In West and Central Africa, the proportions are nearly identical, at 24 and 25 percent. In East Africa, the proportion is much higher: 40 percent of married women wish to stop childbearing.

    Contraceptive prevalence rates across the three regions are a reflection of these varied fertility preferences. In contrast, unmet need for family planning is similar across the three regions, between 24 and 27 percent. Although unmet need is often conceptualized as women’s inability to obtain the contraceptive services that they desire, it also includes women who would prefer to avoid pregnancy but have made a deliberate choice not to use family planning.

    Madsen-Fig3

    Women may choose not to use family planning despite a preference to avoid pregnancy for several reasons, including fear of side effects or other health concerns, infrequent sex, or personal, familial, or cultural opposition to family planning. In East Africa, the most common reason is concern about side effects (reported by 32 percent of women with unmet need), followed by opposition to family planning (23 percent). In West Africa, the reasons are reversed: 30 percent of women with an unmet need for contraception are not using it because of opposition to family planning, while 24 percent cite health concerns.

    Contraceptive use and unmet need, added together, comprise total demand for family planning, or the proportion of married women who currently wish to avoid pregnancy. There is a clear gradation in this indicator across the three regions. Nearly two-thirds of married women in East Africa can be considered to have demand for family planning (62 percent of them are contraceptive users, and 38 percent have unmet need). Demand for family planning falls to 52 percent in Central Africa, and in West Africa, drops to 42 percent. This means that the majority of married women in West Africa do not currently wish to avoid pregnancy.

    What Affects Fertility Preferences?

    Several factors have been posited to influence fertility preferences, such as child mortality, economic development, and education. In brief, such theories suggest that couples will intentionally have more children if they expect some may die; that increasing wealth and urbanization will motivate preferences toward smaller families; and that educated women choose to have fewer children. Of these, the mortality and education theories have the strongest supporting evidence. Increases in per capita income are not strongly correlated with fertility declines, and urbanization does contribute to fertility decline, but to a lesser extent than education and mortality decline.

    More than 10 percent of children die before their fifth birthday

    Although child mortality rates have decreased around the world, they remain high in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 10 percent of children die before their fifth birthday in East, Central, and West Africa. While the rate is lowest in East Africa, the differences between the three regions are likely not large enough to explain all of the variation in fertility preferences.

    This underscores the value of programs to improve educational attainment and quality. Increased education among women is well-established to lower fertility rates, and it is therefore no surprise that education affects fertility preferences as well. However, researchers have found that education and other socioeconomic factors do not explain all of the differences in fertility preferences. Even controlling for these indicators, sub-Saharan African countries have larger desired family sizes. In efforts to explain this finding, researchers have examined family planning programs and determined that, depending on their quality, they can affect fertility preferences too.

    Better information about and access to family planning is important to meet existing levels of unmet need across sub-Saharan Africa, which are high. But one review of the evidence showed that the mere availability of family planning did not affect fertility preferences. Another study found that a significant effect on changing fertility preferences depended on the “effort,” or strength, of individual family planning programs, measured by experts’ assessment of a range of issues, such as official policies, favorable statements by leaders, legal regulations, national budgets, diverse distribution methods including community-based health workers and social marketing, logistics, training, outreach, evaluation, and availability of specific methods. Countries with similar social, economic, and cultural indicators, such as Kenya and Uganda, were paired. Women in countries with “weak” family planning programs reported desired family sizes 1.3 children higher than those in otherwise similar countries where family planning programs were stronger. This effect also existed across all countries when measured in the aggregate.

    Moving Beyond the Status Quo

    What are the implications of these differences? We should not expect West and Central Africa to follow the same demographic trajectory of other regions. Demographers are very clear that fertility rates will not decline to the levels seen in other regions unless preferences about family size change. Without this change, global population will reach the upper end of current projections. Further, the much-ballyhooed demographic dividend will remain elusive for many of these countries.

    Individual fertility preferences must be respected, no matter how high or low

    These broader implications are ultimately secondary because the decision of how many children to have is an established human right. Individual fertility preferences must be respected, no matter how high or low. That said, fertility decisions reflect a complex mix of individual preferences and social context, both of which often evolve over time. Various development initiatives that have a range of benefits for families, communities, and societies also influence fertility preferences by shaping the social context in which such preferences are formed.

    Among these, comprehensive, well-resourced, and inclusive family planning programs should remain a priority. Given that strong family planning programs seem to affect fertility preferences, providing information to increase demand could be a larger component of these efforts. A recent study found that women who participated in community and media outreach efforts were more likely to use modern contraception than those who did not. Political commitments that raise the prominence of family planning are also likely to influence individual attitudes, even if this effect is not easy to directly measure. In addition, investments in education have far-reaching benefits for a range of individual health and wellbeing outcomes, including gender equity. Women who are more empowered, as measured by their autonomy in decision-making, prefer smaller families. Education and outreach towards men cannot be neglected either. In most countries in these regions, men have a higher ideal number of children than women.

    Long-term and concerted commitment will be required across multiple sectors, but there is no reason to assume that West Africa’s fertility preferences are immutable.

    Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group.

    Sources: Bongaarts (2011), DHS Program, Sedgh and Hussain (2014), Shapiro and Gebreselassie (2009), Speizer et al. (2014), United Nations Population Division, Westoff (2010), World Bank.

    Photo Credit: Mother and child in Adwenpaye, Ghana, courtesy of Jonathan Ernst/World Bank; Charts: Elizabeth Leahy Madsen and Schuyler Null, data from UN Population Division and Demographic and Health Surveys.

    Topics: Africa, demography, development, economics, education, family planning, featured, gender, global health, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, population, Sahel, youth
    • Bob Gillespie

      To read more on population policies and programs in 18 countries in Africa go to www,populationcommunication.com. Bob Gillespie President population Communication

    • Susan B. Aradeon

      At least in Nigeria, family planning was off the national and individual agenda for years after the major funder, USAID, withdrew funding in 1995; work to reestablish it on the national agenda just began bearing fruit in 2013. Per capita funding for child survival and family planning has always been much lower in Nigeria than in East Africa. Nigeria may not need the funds but Nigeria continues to need the widespread, per capita benefits of donor activities that create committed family planning stakeholders at all levels as well as satisfied users

    • Dulcie Leimbach

      Sub-Saharan Africa has the market on the world’s 10 youngest nations by population:

      http://passblue.com/2015/02/10/the-top-10-youngest-nations-by-population-theyre-mainly-in-africa/

    • Anthony Taylor

      Does saying that individual preferences must be respected mean that small-family incentives are immoral? Doing the right thing for the wrong reason will become academic as adversity persists for reasons capable of rational remedy. Concern for human rights seem the province of sociologists and administrators, mostly. Morality can be thought of as residing in a civic creed we take on faith to be the best there is, or it can be seen as a matter of guiding our present behavior by awareness that in a real world, “ideas have consequences”.

    • Anthony Taylor

      Saying that the decision of how many children to have is an established human right is a simple declaration of different connotations to different people. This in itself raises a host of issues, such as what other conditions under which people have to live are conventionally not covered by statements of rights, and why this is so. Or that our popularly accepted concepts of human rights are weighted towards the rights of adults rather than those of kids, that they are weighted, as are most movie scripts, towards the common denominators of popular tastes and political fashion.

      Let’s say there were no political objections to offering a cash bonus of, say $2,000. given towards people in the highest fertility countries who would take a course on personal ecological ethics and take a small family pledge. There would be immediate reaction, of course, from religious bodies, nationalists and humanitarians. Benefiting countries would be swamped with immigrants claiming citizenship. Other countries, it would be argued, might fudge statistics or even emulate the characteristics that qualify for aid. That some recipients might cynically take the bonus and do as they please anyway would be endlessly debated, but is besides the point. Merely to publicly espouse a simple and compelling philosophy of personal eco ethics would be a novel and some would say timely moral response to present global trends and their implications.

      In many ways it’s a matter of chance where one is born. Does a baby, depending on where it’s born, have a “choice” in what values and attitudes he or she absorbs. The “rights” we defend out of deference to popular sentiment are mostly those of the parents’ right to mold the child’s cultural outlook rather than those of the child to grow up in a fact-respecting atmosphere, to be exposed to a range of cultural options from which to choose. Of course this may seem overly naive and idealistic. I agree with Stuart Chase that one must start with where people are at in every respect. But it seems that a respect for humanitarian norms could be termed patronizing if the expert assumes the public isn’t ready for frank discussion, would misunderstand and get needlessly inflamed. In other words, we’re being treated as children. The American public on whose behalf the full dimensions of Africa’s crisis is so oversimplified, must be considered too immature to be told the full story?!

      Say one of the world’s highest fertility countries were to accept its participation in a pilot demonstration, this being a sort of Marshall Plan of small family bonuses, universal education, agricultural advisors, urban planners and so on. This has been proposed in obscure journals for decades, so let’s hypothetically give it a green light: Let’s say that an electronic ID were issued to all that country’s citizens to keep that country from being swamped by envious neighbors. That in itself would likely be decried as Orwellian even if it were a last resort to forestall a truly Orwellian world. In the demonstration area, the cash economy would be heavily subsidized to offer tangible rewards for socially altruistic behavior. “How absurd-to artificially weight financial rewards to incentivize living patterns!,” people would say, not noticing that the current ‘tragedy of the commons’ system of economic rewards just as systematically rewards the eco-wastrel.

      Leading sociologists have surmised that the worldwide resurgence of fundamental religion can be seen as an atavistic revolt against the harsher aspects of he modern condition, such as the rise of the mega city with its anonymity and its harsh, impersonal economic system. In this respect, socially maladaptive behavior can be sen as a kind of negative feedback system, which left to itself leads to dystopian prospects. But of course harsher conditions in the near future may embolden various brands of realpolitik of which decent folk hesitate to think.

    • pieter

      They could also implement a two child policy, like China and Vietnam did. Those countries were also desperately poor with average fertility rates of 6 children in 1970. Implementing a two child policy worked very well there, they rose very rapidly on the human development index and the gdp per capita is still skyrocketing.

    • Alex Affixiation

      THese damned idiots. Why isn’t someone doing something about this? Sterilize them so they cant have kids anymore. Uhg…

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • 49890944808_c7d6dfef74_c Why Feminism Is Good for Your Health
    Melinda Cadwallader: "Feminism materializes through investment in human capital and caregiving sectors of the economy...
  • 49890944808_c7d6dfef74_c Why Feminism Is Good for Your Health
    Melinda Cadwallader: People who refuse to acknowledge patriarchy are often the ones who benefit from it. So please, say...
  • Water desalination pipes A Tale of Two Coastlines: Desalination in China and California
    Dr S Sundaramoorthy: It is all fine as theory. What about the energy cost? Arabian Gulf has the money from its own oil....

Related Stories

No related stories.

  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2023. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000