Social change in adolescent fertility in Cameroon

Didier Nganawara, Institut de formation et de Recherche Démographiques
AMINA VANESSA NGAMTIATE, Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (IFORD)

In Cameroon, the teenage fertility rate remains high. In 2018, nearly one in four adolescent girls aged 15-19 (24%) has already started her fertile life (INS, 2018). Adolescent fertility is a problem worth studying because of the high risks of maternal and infant deaths and the adverse effects on schooling. The aim of this paper is to study the social change in adolescent fertility in Cameroon between 2011 and 2018. Specifically, it aims to (i) describe the trend in teenage fertility between 2011 and 2018, (ii) determine the sources of the observed change, (iii) identify the explanatory factors of teenage fertility. The data used are those from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) carried out in Cameroon in 2011 and 2018. The analysis methods used are both descriptive and explanatory. From the descriptive point of view, the decomposition method is used to identify sources of social change in adolescent fertility. At the explanatory level, binomial logistic regression is used in a multilevel approach to highlight the explanatory factors of this phenomenon.

Keywords: Fertility, Children, Adolescents, and Youth

See paper.