Looking Back, Looking Forward: Investigating Fertility and Its Potential Impacts for Timor-Leste's Demographic Future

Christopher Hogan, Flinders University of South Australia

Timor-Leste’s population has grown by more than 70% since independence in 2002. Without improving access to family planning and promoting reproductive autonomy for women and couples, fertility decline may slow down, spurring on high population growth. 2016 Demographic and Health data was used to investigate the effects of socio-economic factors on marriage, contraception, and family planning variables among women in Timor-Leste. Education was an important determinant for age at marriage and family planning access. Recent employment and access to media led to higher probability of both contraceptive uptake and family planning access. These findings were used to produce three fertility assumptions, using Bongaarts’ Proximate Determinants, to project the impact of varying family planning access on Timor-Leste's future population. These assumptions implemented conditions where the level of unmet demand in 2016 is reduced by half, by full, and where contraception uptake reaches current regional averages by 2031. The population projections demonstrated that without continuing fertility decline, the population of Timor-Leste will continue to experience high child dependency. These findings have significant implications for the country’s future demographic and development outcomes, potentially diminishing human development outcomes by placing greater fiscal strain on the provision of resources, services, and infrastructure.

Keywords: Family Planning and Contraception, Fertility, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, Population and Development

See extended abstract.