Can Women’s Empowerment Accelerate Fertility Decline in Angola

Ndola Prata, Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability, UC Berkeley
Karen Weidert, University of California, Berkeley

Women’s empowerment has been associated with lower fertility. Angola, a country in middle Africa has a TFR of 6.2. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether women’s empowerment in Angola is associated with fertility preferences. More specifically, we assess which dimensions of empowerment (e.g socio-cultural, control over sexual and reproductive health, and decision making) influence fertility preferences; and if so, do fertility preferences differ by age. Our hypothesis is that empowered women have preferences for smaller families; and that empowerment influence on fertility preferences is more critical for younger women. We use data from Angola DHS 2015-16 and will redo the analysis with a more recent DH 2023 that will be available in October 2024. Current results show that only socio-cultural dimensions of empowerment are associated with the desire to have no more children and only among the young (15-34 years of age), even when adjusting for other socio-demographic and reproductive factors. We will assess with more recent data if the results are the same and if not, what has contributed to the changes as data will be 7 years apart.

Keywords: Fertility, Gender Dynamics, Population Policies

See extended abstract.