Tom A. Moultrie

Dispensing with marriage: Marital and partnership trends in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 2000-2006

This paper describes marriage and partnership patterns and trends in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 2000-2006. The study is based on longitudinal, population-based data collected by the Africa Centre demographic surveillance system. We consider whether the high rates of non-marriage among Africans in South Africa reported in the 1980s were reversed following the political transformation underway by the 1990s. Our findings show that marriage has continued to decline with a small increase in cohabitation among unmarried couples, particularly in more urbanised areas. Comparing surveillance and census data, we highlight problems with the use of the ‘living together’ marital status category in a highly mobile population.

The South African fertility decline: Evidence from two censuses and a Demographic and Health Survey

Inadequate data and apartheid policies have meant that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, the fertility of South African women. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970. Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996. Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, the paper argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub‐Saharan African country. We show also that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974.

Teenage fertility rates falling in South Africa

1that found no evidence of ‘perverse incentives’ for childbearing associated with the CSG; a second report 2 came to the same conclusion, despite presenting internally inconsistent estimates of the levels of teenage fertility in the country and by population group in the last decade. It is desirable to place in the public domain as much evidence as possible regarding the trends and differentials in teenage fertility rates over an extended period of time. Teenage fertility rates (births per 1 000 women aged 15 - 19) from the 1996 and 2001 censuses and the 1998 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 3 are shown in Table I. Unfortunately the estimates of fertility in the 2003 DHS are implausibly low and cannot be used. 4 There is a strong congruency between the results from the 1996 census and the 1998 DHS, which is all the more robust given that the results from the DHS are averaged 3-year rates, and are centred almost exactly on the census date. Only among coloured teenagers is there some uncertainty as to the level of teenage fertility in the mid- to late 1990s, a few years before the introduction of the CSG in 1998. Data from the 2001 census show that among all population groups, teenage fertility fell by at least 10% over the 5 years between the censuses. This certainly suggests that the introduction of the CSG is unlikely to have given rise to an increase in the number of teenagers giving birth. However, it is impossible to determine precisely the pattern of change in teenage births between the two censuses, and arguably these data are still insufficient to definitively reject suggestions (no matter how unlikely given the context of the South African fertility decline) that the introduction of the CSG modified an even steeper decline within the period.

Birth intervals, postponement, and fertility decline in Africa: A new type of transition?

We investigated birth-interval dynamics in 24 African countries using data from 76 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted since 1986. Controlling for selection bias in the birth-history data using the Brass–Juárez method and regression models produced almost identical results. Birth intervals have lengthened in every country examined. This analysis uncovered a distinctive and previously undocumented pattern of childbearing that is prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa. After allowing for time trends in birth-interval length, the lengthening of birth intervals in almost every country varies little by womens age or parity. Moreover, in several countries, birth intervals are now too long to be explicable by birth spacing contingent on the age of womens youngest child. Rather, women are postponing births for other reasons. These findings offer empirical support for the idea that the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa is following a different pattern from that observed elsewhere.

Fertility Trend and Pattern In A Rural Area of South Africa In The Context of HIV/AIDS

Little is known about the dynamics of fertility transition in South Africa, though recent studies have begun to shed light on demographic changes in the country. This study presents trends and patterns of fertility observed in a rural South African population. Various demographic and statistical techniques were used to examine fertility patterns in a population of 21,847 women in a rural KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) demographic surveillance area. These are compared with patterns seen in another South African rural population under demographic surveillance, and with data from the 1998 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey. Findings are interpreted in light of contraceptive use patterns and HIV prevalence in the population. In South Africa, the end of the fertility transition is now in sight. In rural KZN, where national fertility levels are highest, fertility has declined rapidly for about two decades and would have reached below replacement level in 2003. While fertility has declined rapidly among all women over age 18 years, fertility levels among adolescents have not changed in decades. Although most adolescents in rural KZN were sexually active (60%), few had ever used contraception (200%). High HIV seroprevalence appears to explain a small part of the fertility decline (12%); however, this effect is likely to grow in the near future as the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues in South Africa. If the current trends continue in the future, below replacement fertility, together with high mortality due to AIDS, it could soon lead to negative natural population growth in rural South Africa.

Teenage Childbearing and Educational Attainment in South Africa

The relationship between teenage childbearing and school attainment is investigated using nationally representative longitudinal data drawn from South Africas National Income Dynamics Study. The analysis focuses on the outcomes by 2010 of a panel of 673 young women who were aged 15-18 and childless in 2008. Controlling for other factors, girls who went on to give birth had twice the odds of dropping out of school by 2010 and nearly five times the odds of failing to matriculate. Few girls from households in the highest-income quintile gave birth. Girls who attended schools in higher-income areas and were behind at school were much more likely to give birth than those who were in the appropriate grade for their age or were in no-fee schools. New mothers were much more likely to have re-enrolled in school by 2010 if they were rural residents, they belonged to relatively well-off households, or their own mother had attended secondary school. These findings suggest that, in South Africa, interventions that address poor school attainment would also reduce teenage childbearing.

Racism and reproduction: Population rhetoric in South Africa, 1900–1974

While a huge literature exists on the politics, practice, economics and social implications of apartheid, a literature on the centrality of demographic concerns to the formulation of apartheid poli...

Estimating the effect of HIV/AIDS on fertility among Malawian women using demographic and health survey data

Several studies have shown that HIV is an important distal factor that affects a womans fertility. This study investigates the effect of HIV on fertility among Malawian women using data from the 2004 and 2010 demographic and health surveys. Specifically, the study assesses fertility differentials between HIV-positive and HIV-negative women and the changes in the relationship between HIV and fertility during the study period. Age-specific fertility rates and logistic regressions are used to investigate these objectives. The results show lower age-specific fertility rates (except for the 15–19-year-old age group) and probabilities of giving birth for HIV-positive relative to HIV-negative women before and after controlling for confounding factors respectively. The odds of giving birth for an HIV-positive woman were 34% lower in the period 12 months before the 2004 survey compared to an HIV-negative woman and 25% lower before the 2010 survey (p < 0.01). We think that the scaling up of antiretroviral treatment has contributed to the increase in the likelihood of giving birth among HIV-positive women between 2004 and 2010, more plausibly entailing a possible reduction in HIV sub-fecundity.

A careful look at "A re-look at recent statistics on mortality in the context of HIV/AIDS with particular reference to South Africa".

An article recently published in this journal argues that the life expectancies (and other mortality statistics) produced by models of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa are inconsistent, and questions their reliability. To demonstrate the argument, the author of that paper derived empirical estimates of several mortality statistics from three different sources of data and, on the grounds that the estimates of life expectancy for 2001 and 2006 are somewhat higher than is typically estimated by projection models, concludes that the empirical evidence supports the theoretical view outlined in that paper. If correct, the reasoning (and its empirical demonstration) could be construed as a strong challenge to a dominant orthodoxy surrounding the estimation of mortality statistics in an era of HIV/AIDS and offering some comfort to governments with low Human Development Indices because of the indexs dependence, inter alia, on estimates of life expectancy at birth derived from such models. This paper shows how, on theoretical, methodological and empirical grounds, the reasoning and estimates in the paper are severely flawed, and thus that the conclusions drawn in that paper are unjustified.

Distinguishing the impact of postponement, spacing and stopping on birth intervals: Evidence from a model with heterogeneous fecundity

This paper investigates the impact on birth intervals of three distinct birth control strategies: stopping childbearing, spacing births and the postponement of further childbearing for reasons unrelated to womens family-building histories. A macro-simulation model of the family-building process is described that incorporates heterogeneity in fecundability. This model is used to demonstrate that the postponement of further childbearing has a distinctive impact on schedules of duration-specific fertility rates that differs from that of both family-size limitation and birth spacing. In particular, the simulation results, supplemented by an analytical exposition, show that reductions in fertility due to spacing are a function of interval duration and its log, while reductions due to postponement are a function of interval duration and its square. This provides a way to test statistically for the presence of, and distinguish between, differential postponement and spacing in regression analyses of birth history data.