Africa’s Fertility Decline Is Partly Driven by 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 integrates the extensive literature on diffusion processes in the fertility transition with that on female education and cognition-driven demographic transition and operationalizes this combination for practical use in population projections. It captures the effect of population heterogeneity by the 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 for all African countries –it assesses the diffusion processes in both ideal family size and actual fertility at the level of sample clusters, ty. Level effects of women’s mean years of schooling on the ideal and actual fertility of women with lower and higher education living in the same sample cluster. The results show strong diffusion effects for both the fertility intention and behavior that suggest that they should also be included in future fertility projections of heterogeneous populations differentiated by level of education.

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 Presented in Session 106. The Role of Social Networks and Diffusion in Fertility