Relationships between Marriage and Fertility Changes in Six sub-Saharan African Countries

Abstract

Marriage and fertility are institutions that comprise a fundamental part of adult life in Africa. Decades ago, universal and early marriage ensured that women spent the majority of their reproductive lives married; and marriage was the main locus of childbearing. However, while both institutions in recent decades have transformed, changes in relationships between marriage and fertility in various parts of the region have not yet been established. Relatively little is known about 1) changes in aggregate fertility that is due to either shifts in marriage rates or to changes in marital and nonmarital fertility; 2) shifting determinants of marital and nonmarital fertility in diverse African contexts; 3) how measures of parity progression are influenced by changes in women’s timing of fertility and marriage events; 4) the variation in contraceptive use by marital status across a varied group of African countries. This dissertation addresses these gaps in four empirical chapters. The dissertation uses Demographic and Health Survey data from six countries (Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Rwanda, Benin, and Nigeria) to explore the association between marriage and fertility over the past four decades. The first chapter offers descriptive accounts of how changes in proportions married, and rates of marital and nonmarital fertility are captured in overall fertility changes. The second chapter explores direct and indirect determinants of fertility changes of married and single women. The third chapter focuses on cohort fertility, and examines whether women’s marital status influences parity progression estimates. The fourth chapter examines differences in contraceptive use for women of different marital status. Taken together, these findings imply that marriage and fertility are still closely linked in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, I find that changes in proportions married matter more for fertility changes in countries with higher fertility compared with those with lower fertility, while the determinants of fertility across and within the six countries I study. These results demonstrate variations across the region: the nature, strength, and determinants of the relationships between marriage and fertility tend to be country-specific and are changing over time.