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THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN SHAPING AFRICAN FERTILITY PATTERN: EVIDENCE FROM DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEYS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2017

Clifford Odimegwu  and
Sunday A. Adedini
Clifford Odimegwu*
Affiliation:
Demography and Population Studies Programme, Schools of Public Health and Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Sunday A. Adedini
Affiliation:
Demography and Population Studies Programme, Schools of Public Health and Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Demography and Social Statistics Department, Faculty of Social Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
*
1Corresponding author. Email: Clifford.Odimegwu@wits.ac.za
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Summary

Anthropological explanations of demographic outcomes have emphasized the need to understand how community structures contribute to those outcomes. However, studies on fertility dynamics in Africa have largely focused on micro-level factors, thus ignoring the influence of community contexts. Using the most recent Demographic and Health Survey data from Egypt (Northern Africa), Cameroon (Middle Africa), Kenya (Eastern Africa), Nigeria (Western Africa) and Zimbabwe (Southern Africa), the study employed multilevel Poisson regression models to examine the influence of community factors on African fertility levels and patterns. The number of sampled women (aged 15–44) ranged from 7774 in Kenya (2008–09) to 30,480 in Nigeria (2008). The findings demonstrate some significant community effects on African fertility patterns, even after controlling for a number of individual-level factors. For instance, residence in socioeconomically disadvantaged regions, rural settings, poor neighbourhood and communities with high family size norm were found to be associated with higher fertility levels in the selected countries. The emerging African fertility patterns require the need to go beyond addressing individual-level characteristics in the efforts to reduce fertility levels in Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 49 , Special Issue S1: Low Fertility in Developing Countries: Causes and Implications , November 2017 , pp. S46 - S61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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