Why Does High African Fertility Persist? Women’s Education vs. Women’s Employment

Tropical Africa’s exceptionally slow fertility decline has been explained by both weak economic development and an unusually pro-natal culture. Yet these explanations are both too simple. This region has shown a stall in its fertility decline despite recent improvements in infant mortality, education, and urbanization. Its response to development has thus been different from that of other developing regions. At the same time, within Tropical Africa, women with higher incomes, living in cities, and with more education exhibit lower fertility. Thus, fertility is not culturally impervious to socio-economic gains. We present a path analysis of how various modernization factors affect fertility in Tropical Africa vs. other developing regions. We find that this region is different. Cultural family patterns in this region render gains in income, urbanization, and women’s paid employment ineffective in reducing fertility. Women’s education, however, is vitally important, as it is the most significant driver of changes in birth intervals and a strong direct factor in reducing desired family size. By contrast, women’s employment has no significant effect at all on fertility in Tropical Africa – neither through family size nor through birth intervals. Women’s education is more effective in lowering fertility than in other regions; yet Tropical Africa lags far behind other regions in educating its women.