Factors Affecting Contraceptive Use in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Socioeconomic Context
3 The Socioeconomic Context
Pages 52-84
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From page 52... ...
Our discussion will emphasize levels of income per capita, child mortality, educational attainment among adults, and the costs and benefits of child schooling. The overriding issue here and in Chapter 4 is whether, and under what conditions, sub-Saharan Africa is likely to join in the process of fertility decline in progress elsewhere.
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From page 53... ...
The World Bank report locates the reasons for high fertility in Africa in a set of conventional indices of economic development: low incomes per capita, high infant and child mortality rates; low levels of adult literacy; high proportions of the work force in agriculture; low percentages of the population living in urban areas; and continuing difficulties across the continent in access to education, health, and family planning services. In none of these dimensions has much of Africa advanced to a threshold sufficient to induce fertility decline, according to the report.
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From page 54... ...
SOCIOECONOMIC DIFFERENTIALS OF FERTILITY National-Level Relationships In this section we briefly review the theoretical arguments linking fertility levels to a set of socioeconomic determinants: income per capita, child mortality, educational attainment among adults, and the costs and benefits of child schooling. Where appropriate, we illustrate the theoretical arguments with data drawn from recent cross-national samples of developing countries.
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From page 55... ...
To set the stage for the theoretical discussion, Figure 3-1 shows the positive relationship of contraceptive prevalence (all methods) to gross national product (GNP)
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From page 56... ...
. Estimates of total fertility rates4 are available for a much larger sample of sub-Saharan countries.
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From page 57... ...
-5_ _~, 4- + +' + ~ '__ 3 2 ~ 1 O ~ o 14. o 4 I I I I I T 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 GNP per Capita: 1989 $ FIGURE 3-2 Total fertility rates by per capita GNP.
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From page 58... ...
Botswana 1 1 1 ' 0 250 500 750 GNP per Capita: 1989 $ 1000 1250 1500 FIGURE 3-3 Total fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa (countries with GNP per capita less than $1,7001. SOURCE: World Bank (1991~.
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From page 59... ...
We see little basis for the extrapolation of existing demographic theory on mortality-fertility linkages to such unprecedented circumstances. Figure 3-4 shows the relationship between total fertility rates and child mortality rates, with the sub-Saharan countries highlighted.
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From page 60... ...
If time spent in work and time in child care are mutually exclusive, then wage measures one of the principal opportunity costs of childrearing. It follows that the higher is the price of time, the lower should be fertility.
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From page 61... ...
SOURCE: World Bank (1991~. Figure 3-5 shows that higher levels of female literacy are associated with lower total fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere.
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From page 62... ...
Total fertility rates for 1989 are arrayed on the vertical axis the quantity dimension. The horizontal axis shows the quality dimension, as expressed in 1988 primary school enrollment ratios.
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From page 63... ...
More plausible responses to an increase in the price of education are represented in an enrollment reduction accompanied by little change in fertility (a movement from position A to position C) , or perhaps a decrease in both fertility and child schooling (movement from A to D)
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From page 64... ...
If one wishes to make predictions about fertility change, the costs of educational investments cannot be considered in isolation from the anticipated rectums. -- -O ~ The Combined Relation of Per Capita Income, Mortality, Education, and Fertility Above we considered the bivariate relationships between fertility and per capita income, child mortality, and education, using national-level data.
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From page 65... ...
Table 3-1 presents the results of two regression equations based on data from 68 developing countries around the world with per capita incomes in 1989 of less than $3,000. Model 1, shown in column 1, indicates that total fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa are significantly higher than elsewhere, net of levels of income, infant mortality, and adult enrollment ratios atta~nment.~2 This difference in levels of fertility is evident in the positive coefficient on the SSA dummy variable, which distinguishes between sub-Sa 12The specification employs 1965 infant mortality rates, because more recent mortality figures could as easily be the result of high fertility as its cause, as indicated in footnote 8.
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From page 66... ...
We see no evidence here that fertility rates in the region are any less responsive to incomes, mortality rates, or schooling, by comparison with other developing countries outside Africa. Among all regression coefficients on interactions between the SSA dummy variable and socioeconomic determinants, none achieves statistical significance.
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From page 67... ...
Figure 3-7 employs the regression results from column 1 to identify the sub-Saharan countries with pronounced differentials between their expected total fertility rates, given socioeconomic determinants, and their actual TFRs. As can be seen, the largest sub-Saharan countries display fertility levels that are quite similar to their predicted values; indeed, Nigeria, Zaire, and Tanzania show modest shortfalls of actual fertility relative to predicted.
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From page 68... ...
Similar gaps in total fertility rates appear in the WFS data for Asia, but the differential by residence in Latin America is much larger, amounting to 2.6 children. In regard to women's education, Cochrane and Farid find a mean differential in TFRs amounting to two children between women without education and those with seven or more years of schooling.
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From page 69... ...
Ainsworth concludes that if income growth goes unaccompanied by increases in female educational attainment, fertility will very likely rise in Cote d'Ivoire. These studies leave unclear precisely what behavioral mechanisms are at work in the link between female schooling and lower fertility.
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From page 70... ...
As Hill (199lb) observes, in the 1950s most African countries displayed child mortality rates in the range of 160400 deaths per 1,000 live births, and in only a few countries was the rate lower than 220.
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From page 71... ...
Elsewhere in Africa, child mortality rates continued to decline through the mid-1980s even in the face of difficult economic circumstances and cutbacks in government spending. Even the Sahelian countries (including Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and The Gambia)
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From page 72... ...
found that perceptions of mortality change varied considerably across socioeconomic groups. Respondents with completed primary schooling agreed that mortality had been reduced in the present generation compared to the past, whereas those with less schooling denied that any such change had taken place.
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From page 73... ...
But if the child is older or resides in a rural setting where his contribution to the family economy can be considerable, or if the household as a whole is in strained economic circumstances, the opportunity costs of school attendance can be considerable.~7 To the extent that economic conditions continue to favor the urban sector in sub-Saharan Afnca, where child labor may not have the significance that it does in the rural sector, and to the extent that income growth returns to the region, we would expect the opportunity costs of schooling to continue to decline in importance. i6Because the opportunity costs of schooling measure the value of child labor, they measure one aspect of the benefits of high fertility.
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From page 74... ...
notes that primary school fees were abolished in the early 1980s and then, in the face of a very rapid rise in enrollments, were replaced by various levies and capital charges (also see World Bank, 1988~. In Botswana, by contrast, public sector primary school fees were reduced through the 1970s and finally eliminated altogether in 1980.
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From page 75... ...
In summary, the general trend is that of an increase in the direct costs of schooling, although Botswana may provide an exception to the trend and the net change in Zimbabwe is unclear. Very little information is available regarding fees and other costs in the private educational sector, which is a significant presence at the secondary school level in a number of African countries (see World Bank, 1988~.
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From page 76... ...
In summarizing the results for Kenya and Tanzania, the World Bank (1988) suggests that an earnings differential of 25 percent for secondary relative to primary schooling is attributable to the improvement in cognitive skills produced by secondary school.
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From page 77... ...
These programs sought to redirect government spending and to reduce the size of the government sector; in addition, they were often designed explicitly to influence the relative prices of food, education, and health care. Thus, the past decade has been one of profound change not only in income levels, but also in relative prices and policies determining access to social services.
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From page 78... ...
in the economic sense of the term, one would expect income contraction to be accompanied by a fertility decline, or at least by a pause in family building. One would equally well expect a return to high fertility as income levels improve.
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From page 79... ...
However, the current economic situation, which combines income contraction and various increases in childrearing costs, may well have rendered acceptable, for the first time, the notion of family limitation.
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From page 80... ...
Thus, perhaps contrary to expectation, the policy response to economic crisis and adjustment has typically been to compromise in the dimension of physical capital investments. However, even if the education and health sectors have been able to protect their shares of government budgets, they have not been able to escape cutbacks on a per capita basis.22 Figure 3-10 shows the trends in per capita central government spending on education, both for the largest countries in the region and for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (for the latter, results are weighted by population)
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From page 81... ...
, gradually slipped back to less than 70 percent by the end of the decade (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 19901. Among the largest countries, Nigeria, Zaire, and Tanzania experienced sharp declines in enrollments from about 90 percent in the early 1980s to 65-75 percent in the latter part of the decade.
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From page 82... ...
The advance in secondary schooling by Nigeria, from less than 20 percent in 1980 to about 24 percent in 1987, is especially noteworthy, given the decline in its primary enrollments over the period (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1990~. Also of interest is the continuing increase in the enrollment ratios of women relative to men.
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From page 83... ...
The economic crises of the 1980s may have opened the door to the acceptability of family limitation, but if income growth resumes without structural change, fertility decline need not follow. The experiences of sub-Saharan countries have been so varied in respect to socioeconomic development, and governments so heterogeneous in their social sector policies, that no general forecast regarding fertility and contraceptive use should be made.
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From page 84... ...
Yet even in the larger countries, economic stagnation, and structural adjustment may have brought into relief previously latent demands for family limitation among important subgroups of the population. In an atmosphere of austerity, policies addressed to these subgroups may find a newly receptive audience.
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