Fertility Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys

David Shapiro, Pennsylvania State University
Lisa Strunk, Pennsylvania State University
Tesfayi Gebreselassie, Pennsylvania State University

In previous work we used data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of nearly 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to provide an overview and analyses of fertility transition in the region. That research pointed toward a three-stage transition process, with fertility decline beginning in urban areas and then spreading to rural places. Multivariate analyses of cross-sectional data on age-specific fertility rates in urban and rural places highlighted the importance of women's education, proportions married, contraceptive use, infant and child mortality, and urban residence as influences on fertility. This research extends that earlier work by focusing on data for the subset of countries that have had at least two DHS surveys. Analyses of data from countries with multiple DHS surveys allow us to examine changes in fertility in urban and rural places directly, and to assess how those changes are related to levels of and changes in the corresponding explanatory variables.