Stall in fertility decline in Eastern African countries: regional analysis of patterns, determinants and implications

摘要

We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the patterns of stall in fertilitydecline in four Eastern African countries. Contrary to patterns of fertility transition in Africa thatcut across various socio-economic and geographical groups within countries, we find strong selec-tivity of fertility stall across different groups and regions in all four countries. In both Kenya andTanzania where fertility decline has stalled at the national level, it continued to decline amongthe most educated women and in some regions. While fertility has remained at pre-transitionlevel in Uganda over the past 20 years, there are signs of decline with specific groups of women(especially the most educated, urban and those in the Eastern region) taking the lead. ForZimbabwe, although fertility has continued to decline at the national level, stall is observedamong women with less than secondary education and those in some of the regions. We linkthese intra-country variations to differential changes in socio-economic variables, family planningprogramme environment and reproductive behaviour models. The results suggest that declines incontraceptive use, increases in unmet need for family planning, increasing preferences for largerfamilies, and increases in adolescent fertility were consistently associated with stalls in subgroupfertility across all four countries. These results are consistent with models that emphasize the roleof declines in national and international commitments to family planning programmes in thepremature stall in sub-Saharan fertility transition.