This paper describes marriage and partnership patterns and trends in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 2000-2006. The study is based on longitudinal, population-based data collected by the Africa Centre demographic surveillance system. We consider whether the high rates of non-marriage among Africans in South Africa reported in the 1980s were reversed following the political transformation underway by the 1990s. Our findings show that marriage has continued to decline with a small increase in cohabitation among unmarried couples, particularly in more urbanised areas. Comparing surveillance and census data, we highlight problems with the use of the ‘living together’ marital status category in a highly mobile population.
We investigated birth-interval dynamics in 24 African countries using data from 76 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted since 1986. Controlling for selection bias in the birth-history data using the Brass-Juárez method and regression models produced almost identical results. Birth intervals have lengthened in every country examined. This analysis uncovered a distinctive and previously undocumented pattern of childbearing that is prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa. After allowing for time trends in birth-interval length, the lengthening of birth intervals in almost every country varies little by women's age or parity. Moreover, in several countries, birth intervals are now too long to be explicable by birth spacing contingent on the age of women's youngest child. Rather, women are postponing births for other reasons. These findings offer empirical support for the idea that the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa is following a different pattern from that observed elsewhere.
Much of the literature on fertility transition presumes that women birth control is practiced either to limit family size or to space births. This paper argues that women also use contraception to postpone pregnancy. Postponement is not synonymous with spacing. It arises when women delay their next birth for indefinite periods for reasons unrelated to the age of their youngest child, but without deciding not to have any more children. Postponement has a distinctive impact on the shape of birth interval distributions that differs from those of family size limitation, birth spacing, or a mixture of the two behaviours. Some populations, such as that in South Africa, have developed fertility regimes characterized by birth intervals far longer than can be accounted for by birth spacing. Postponement of further childbearing that eventually becomes permanent may be an important driver of the transition to lower fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. Timaeus & Moultrie 3The main immediate motivation for using contraception is obvious: it is to avoid pregnancy, or at least to reduce the risk of conception associated with sexual intercourse. In other words, contraception is used for birth control. The reasons why women and their partners may wish to avoid pregnancy and childbearing are many and varied. However, much of the demographic literature on fertility transition classifies motives for birth control into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive theoretical categories -the limitation of family size and the spacing of births.This paper suggests that a third important motive exists for using contraception. It is to postpone or delay pregnancy and giving birth. Birth postponement is not synonymous with birth spacing. It is conceptually distinct and has a different impact on birth interval distributions. Fertility regimes characterized by very long birth intervals cannot arise from spacing but can only be explained by widespread postponement of births achieved by contraceptive and other means. Postponement can have a substantial impact on aggregate fertility. In particular, it may be an important driver of fertility decline in Africa.The arguments just summarized are developed in successive sections of the paper. The first of these critically reviews the literature on fertility intentions and motivations for contraceptive use. It argues that the substantive, measurement, and programmatic concerns of demography have tended to direct researchers' attention away from careful consideration of reasons for practicing birth control other than family size limitation. While the importance of distinguishing postponement of births from spacing of births has been pointed out before, it has not become part of the commonplace wisdom of everyone studying fertility transition.The second substantive section of the paper considers birth interval distributions. It argues that the impact of contraceptive use on the duration-specific hazard of giving birth differs depending on whether contraception is being used for stopping, spacing, or post...
Inadequate data and apartheid policies mean that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, South African fertility. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970.Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996.Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, it argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub-Saharan African country.We also show that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974.
Stalled fertility declines have been identified in several regions across the developing world, but the current conceptualization of a stalled fertility decline is poorly theorized and does not lend itself to objective measurement. We propose a more rigorous and statistically testable definition of stalled fertility decline that can be applied to time‐series data. We then illustrate the utility of our definition through its application to data from rural South Africa for the period 1990‐2005 collected from a demographic surveillance site. Application of the approach suggests that fertility decline has indeed stalled in rural KwaZulu‐Natal, at about three children per woman. The stall, some 20 percent above the replacement fertility level, does not appear to be associated with a rise in wanted fertility or attenuated access to contraceptive methods. This identification of a stalled fertility decline provides the first evidence of such a stall in southern Africa, the region with the lowest fertility levels in sub‐Saharan Africa.
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