Social Dynamics of Adolescent Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993) / Chapter Skim
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2 LEVELS AND TRENDS IN ADOLESCENT FERTILITY
2 LEVELS AND TRENDS IN ADOLESCENT FERTILITY
Pages 16-36
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From page 16... ...
LEVELS OF EDUCATION, SEXUAL EXPERIENCE, MARRIAGE, FERTILITY, AND CONTRACEPTIVE USE AMONG ADOLESCENTS Beginning with current levels, Table 2-1 presents a summary of basic cross-national DHS data on educational attainment, sexual activity, marriage, and fertility among African women aged 15 to 19. The first three columns display information on education.
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From page 18... ...
Almost certainly, the reason that the 1984 CPS and the DHS and census are so different is because the CPS asked women additional probes concerning women's marital status and their"partners." Although we see no reason to exclude the Botswana results on adolescents' marital status, we are by no means claiming that these results or those from any other country are accurate. Quite the contrary: Almost any attempt to categorize unions as married or unmarried quickly runs into trouble in many African countries, because of the fluidity and ambiguity surrounding unions.
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From page 19... ...
Table 2-2 focuses on another important aspect of the changing social context of fertility and reproduction in Africa: the rapidly rising knowledge and use of modern contraception. Women are almost certainly underreporting their knowledge and use of modern contraception (see, for example, Bleek, 1987J.
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From page 21... ...
The absolute percentages are not large; but they are remarkable inasmuch as social and economic barriers make it difficult for adolescents in general, and particularly unmarried ones, to obtain modern contraceptives. Another surprise is that large numbers of sexually active, unmarried adolescent women in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Togo are using traditional methods of contraception instead of modern methods.
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From page 22... ...
SOURCE: Demographic and Health Surveys Standard Recode Files, weighted data. second configuration consists of unmarried adolescents, often schoolgirls, living in urban areas whose pregnancies provoke condemnation.
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From page 23... ...
14 8 2 22 SOURCE: Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey Standard Recode File, weighted data. education, marriage, contraceptive use, and fertility across the four principal regions.
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From page 24... ...
Finally, because marriage in Africa is better viewed as a process rather than an event, we suspect that older women, more so than younger ones, may underreport premarital births because the unions into which these children were born would have had more time to mature into recognized marriages. Education Formal education for women, particularly secondary education, is widely correlated with low female fertility and low child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (Feachem et al., 1991; Cohen, 1993~.
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From page 25... ...
(We take conjugal unions, as the DHS did, to include both women reporting they were married and those reporting they were living with a man but not married.) In most countries, there was little difference in the proportion
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From page 26... ...
To supplement and check the DHS information, Table 2-8 examines trends in adolescent marriage for women aged 15-19 in sub-Saharan African countries by comparing census data for two points in time, whenever such data are available. In other cases, we were forced to use a less reliable
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From page 27... ...
. check on consistency: comparing census results with survey results (see vandeWalle, 19931.
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From page 28... ...
The largest declines appear in Burundi, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. In two countries, Liberia TABLE 2-9 Percentage of All Respondents Aged 20 and Older Who Have Given Birth Before Age 20, Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries Age at Time of Survey Country 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 Botswana 55 61 60 57 Burundi 27 37 36 38 Ghana 51 50 58 56 Kenya 58 67 70 67 Liberia 64 62 55 52 Mali 67 61 64 59 Nigeria 54 54 57 4 Senegal 59 61 60 61 Togo 56 58 64 55 Uganda 68 68 72 73 Zimbabwe 49 58 59 53 SOURCE: Demographic and Health Surveys Standard Recode Files, weighted data.
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From page 29... ...
premarital births rose little, if at all. Taken together, Tables 2-10 and 2-11 show slight increases in four countries in proportions of women giving birth premaritally, and more noticeable increases in five of the eleven DHS countries in proportions of premarital births.
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From page 30... ...
Premarital births are defined as beginning one year before the date of first marriage reported in the DHS. SOURCE: Demographic and Health Surveys Standard Recode Files, weighted data.
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From page 31... ...
LEVELS AND TRENDS IN ADOLESCENT FERTILITY TABLE 2-11 Premarital Births as a Percentage of All Births to Women Under Age 20, Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries Age at Time of Survey Country 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 Botswana Burundi Ghana Kenya Liberia Mali Nigeria Senegal Togo Uganda Zimbabwe 77 62 6 9 27 28 7 6 6 21 18 5 7 61 s 8 16 18 8 9 8 8 8 7 6 10 13 12 57 1 6 14 18 14 14 13 14 7 11 13 13 SOURCE: Demographic and Health Surveys Standard Recode Files, weighted data. TABLE 2-12 Premarital Births as a Percentage of All Births to Women Under Age 20, by Current Place of Residence, Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries Age at Time of Survey 20-29 30-39 Urban Rural Urban Rural Botswana Burundi Ghana Kenya Liberia Mali Nigeria Senegal Togo Uganda Zimbabwe 72 9 7 30 32 6 12 17 23 15 68 60 61 8 4 5 9 18 16 13 9 7 2 8 22 15 6 10 12 12 24 10 17 22 15 10 SOURCE: Demographic and Health Surveys Standard Recode Files, weighted data.
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From page 32... ...
Group 1 Figure 2-1 displays trends for Kenya in three indicators: percentage of women who married before age 20, attended secondary school, and had a first birth a year or more before their first conjugal union. The figure shows a clear increase in secondary school enrollment, accompanied by an increase in the proportion never married under age 20 and an increase in the proportion of women having premarital births.
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From page 33... ...
33 Cal .
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From page 34... ...
The patterns for Group 1, then, are those of more schooling, delayed marriage, and higher proportions of premarital births. We stress once again that teenagers are not necessarily having more children; Kenya, in fact, has had a major decline in the proportion of first births before age 20 (see Table 2-9~.
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From page 35... ...
Group 3 The data from the remaining six countries do not suggest the emergence of the kind of adolescent fertility pattern experienced in the United Statesor even in Kenya or Senegal. The proportion of premarital births changed little, a stability paralleled, on the whole, for most of the other indicators except education.
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From page 36... ...
Although the African and Western situations differ in key respects, these premarital births could be as great a problem for African girls as they are for girls in the United States.
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