Africa’s Fertility Declines and the Diffusion Processes among Education Groups

Saroja Adhikari, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Wolfgang Lutz, Wittgenstein Centre
Endale Kebede, Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital

This paper attempts to capture the effect of population heterogeneity by level of education on fertility beyond its purely compositional effect by also including social learning and diffusion processes in the model. Using all available Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 34 sub-Saharan African countries,we assess the cluster-level effects of the mean years of schooling of women on the ideal and actual fertility of women with lower and higher education living in the same sample cluster. To study cluster level effect on fertility two major research questions were asked: 1. To what degree do social characteristics impact an individual's decision-making process and behavior regarding family size within a community? 2. How these influence of social characteristics on individual's decision-making process and behavior regarding family size can be modeled to predict the future fertility in Africa? The results show strong influence of social characteristics in both individual’s intention and behavior regarding family size.