An analysis of 670,449 African women born between 1950-1995 found that declining fertility trends in Africa between 1985-2010 were stalled when women were deprived of educational opportunities during periods of economic and political turmoil; of the 18 sub-Saharan African countries analyzed, Ghana had the steadiest fertility decline, which was associated with continuous improvements in education, while Kenya's fertility decline stalled around 2000 and continued again in 2003 when better-educated women became old enough to reproduce.
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Article #17-17288: "Stalls in Africa's fertility decline partly result from disruptions in female education," by Endale Kebede, Anne Goujon, and Wolfgang Lutz.
MEDIA CONTACT: Wolfgang Lutz, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg Austria; tel: +43-2236807294; email: lutz@iiasa.ac.at
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences