Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Eloundou-Enyegue, Parfait
• Giroux, Sarah
• Tenikue, Michel

Titel

African Transitions and Fertility Inequality: A Demographic Kuznets Hypothesis

Ist Teil von

• Population and development review, 2017-05, Vol.43 (S1), p.59-83

Ort / Verlag

New York: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

Wiley-Blackwell Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• “Is Africa is different?” The question permeates the debate over Africa’s fertility transitions, whether analysts ponder the causes, the consequences, or the socioeconomic patterns of these transitions. Do Africa’s transitions occur at a lower threshold of economic development compared to, say, Latin American countries (Bongaarts and Casterline 2013; Bongaarts, this volume)? Will they yield a demographic dividend, as was the case among the Asian Tigers (Bloom et al. 2007)? And do they spread evenly across socioeconomic groups, as was claimed for Western Europe, or, instead, do they trickle from top to bottom income groups in ways that increase what we refer to in this chapter as fertility inequality (Caldwell, Orubuloye, and Caldwell 1992; Shapiro and Tambashe 2002)? A tentative consensus is emerging on the first two debates (Bongaarts this volume; Karra, Canning, and Wilde, this volume), but not on the last. Unresolved in this third debate is a question about evenness—specifically, whether African transitions follow a horizontal, inequality-preserving pattern (Caldwell, Orubuloye, and Caldwell 1992) or a more top-down sequence (Shapiro and Tambashe 2002). This unresolved question has implications for both the pace and dividends of African transitions. Fertility transitions are more likely to stall, and the dividends from these transitions are less likely to be evenly shared, if transitions occur in a top-down manner that increases fertility inequality. Studies of fertility inequality can thus inform both scientific concerns over stalling transitions (Bongaarts 2008; Garenne 2008; Schoumaker 2009) and policy concerns over the prospects for a shared dividend in sub-Saharan Africa (Bloom et al. 2007). Against this background, we explore how and why fertility inequality is changing during the course of African demographic transitions.