Fertility and Other Determinants of Women’s Employment in Cameroon

Abstract

Maternity, pregnancy, childbirth, and the period after childbirth impose a substantial burden on women's health and time. This, in turn, can have a significant impact on women's ability to participate in the labour force. This work was aimed at investigating the effect of fertility and other determinants of women's employment in Cameroon. The expo-facto research design and pooled data from the 1991, 1998, 2004, 2011 was used. The Instrumental Variable Probit Model and Control Function were used to analyze the data. The result of the effect of fertility on women's employment in Cameroon was positive and statistically significant. Other determinants like Education, husband education, husband's occupation, marital status, region of origin, and lifetime sex partners also positive and statistically significant influence on women's employment in Cameroon. Woman's age, wealth levels, age at first birth, being a Muslim and year of data had a negative and statistically significant effect on a woman's likelihood to get employed. From the results, it was concluded that, fertility and other determinants statistically significant effect on women's in Cameroon. This study thus recommended the promulgation and subsidization of daycare services in Cameroon to increase the likehood of women with children to seek employment. The work also recommends the promotion of women's education in Cameroon so as to facilitate women's asses to employment.

The determinants of household fertility decisions in Burkina Faso

“…Empirical analyses are also mixed. Some studies show a negative effect of household income or female employment on fertility (Chicoine, 2020;Mayin et al, 2022), while other studies suggest a positive effect (Alderotti et al, 2021;Alderotti et al, 2022).…”