Population Chatter for Clearer and Broader Thinking about Fertility

Jenny Trinitapoli, University of Chicago
Gertrude Finyiza, University of Denver

Balaka, Malawi is characterized by early marriage, high fertility, and union instability. Researchers’ interest in such settings tends to focus on the challenges of estimation and the relationship to economic development. Moving away from traditional estimation strategies, this paper leverages population chatter -- how ordinary people perceive, narrate, and debate the fertility, mortality, and migration conditions around them – to suggest new avenues for research on fertility. Drawing upon 600 pages of ethnographic fieldnotes written in 2015, the analysis is organized around the following question: What we would know about sexual and reproductive health if we privileged ordinary women’s exchanges with one another in everyday conversation over the entrenched measures (i.e., IFS, pregnancy desire, birth-histories) that have come to define sample surveys? Results are organized around three key themes: 1) the moral nature of population chatter, 2) widespread discontent with contraception, and 3) food insecurity as a caloric and emotional vulnerability.