Fertility Transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa at the Sub-National Level

Fertility decline has spread to most of sub-Saharan African countries over the last two decades (Kirk and Pillet, 1998; Shapiro, 2007; Tabutin and Schoumaker, 2004). While in the mid 1980s only a few countries had experienced a significant decrease of its fertility, by the early 2000s, fertility had started to decline in approximately three countries out of four (Tabutin and Schoumaker, 2004). Several studies have shown that the pace of fertility declines varies greatly from one country to another (Garenne and Joseph, 2002; Tabutin and Schoumaker, 2004). More recently, papers have documented the stalling of the transition in countries like Kenya and Ghana (Bongaarts, 2005; Westoff and Cross, 2005; Shapiro and Gebreselassie, 2007).