Abstract
The traditional fertility transition model has been criticized because it is based on the demographic changes that occurred throughout Europe and the West at the end of the nineteenth century, where urbanization and industrialization were identified as major drivers of fertility decline. In other regions of the world, it appears that fertility transitions are driven by multiple interacting factors (Mason 1997) that are increasingly associated with an urban transition rather than industrialization and economic growth. It is now widely recognized that urban areas tend to have lower fertility rates than their rural counterparts (White et al. 2005). Given Africa’s current rapid pace of urbanization (United Nations 2006), one would expect a strong decline in overall fertility rates, though such declines have stalled in much of the continent, possibly attributable to the cultural importance given to reproduction as a means to ensure the survival of traditional lineages (Caldwell 1996).
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This research was funded in part by grant number R01 HD054906 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.
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Benza, M. (2013). Living Arrangements and Fertility: A Case Study in Southern Ghana. In: Weeks, J., Hill, A., Stoler, J. (eds) Spatial Inequalities. GeoJournal Library, vol 110. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6732-4_9
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