Fertility Limitation and Child Schooling in Ouagadougou: Selective Fertility or Resource Dilution?

Using original data collected in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, this study investigates evidence for the competing theories that fertility reductions increase children's education through either the quantity-quality tradeoff (intentionally choosing smaller families to make greater investments in education and other indicators of child quality) or resource dilution (having more children reduces resources available per child, regardless of intentionality of family size). The results provide evidence for both hypotheses: children having four or fewer siblings were significantly more likely to be enrolled in school if their mothers had intentionally stopped childbearing relative to those whose mothers wanted more children but whose childbearing was limited by subfecundity. The difference between intentional and unintentional family limitation was not significant for parities greater than five. In addition, the relationship between number of siblings and their schooling is negative, regardless of the intentionality of family-size limitation, but the strength of this negative relationship is approximately twice as high among children whose mothers intentionally limited fertility (reflecting both selection and dilution effects) than among children whose mothers were subfecund (reflecting the pure dilution effect).

Environmental factors and childhood Fever in areas of the Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System, Burkina Faso.

Using data on 825 under-5 children from the Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System collected in 2010, this article examines the effects of aspects of the immediate environment on childhood fever. Logit regression models were estimated to assess the effects of the quality of the local environment on the probability that a child is reported to have had a fever in the two weeks preceding the survey, after controlling for various demographic and socioeconomic variables. While the estimated impact of some environmental factors persisted in the full models, the effects of variables such as access to water and type of household waste management decreased in the presence of demographic, socioeconomic and neighbourhood factors. The management of waste water was found to significantly affect the occurrence of childhood fever. Overall, the results of the study call for more efforts to promote access to tap water to households at prices that are affordable for the local population, where the threats to child health appears to be greatest.

Fertility decline and child schooling in urban settings of Burkina Faso.

As evidenced in Western rich countries, Asia, and Latin America, lower fertility allows couples to invest more in each of their children's schooling. This postulate is the key rationale of family planning policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, most studies on Africa have found no correlation or even a positive relationship between the number of children in a family and their educational attainment. These mixed results are usually explained by African family solidarity and resource transfers that might reduce pressures on household resources occasioned by many births as well as methodological problems that have afflicted much research on the region. Our study aims to assess the impact of family size on children's schooling in Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso), using a better measure of household budget constraints and taking into account the simultaneity of fertility and schooling decisions. In contrast to most prior studies on sub-Saharan Africa, we find a net negative effect of sibship size on the level of schooling achieved by children--one that grows stronger as they progress through the educational system.

Why are virgin adolescents worried about contracting HIV/AIDS? Evidence from four sub-Saharan African countries.

Whether well founded or not, perceptions of one's own HIV risk have been shown by health behavior models to be an important factor in determining individuals' sexual behavior. Although empirical studies on the determinants of HIV risk perception exist, only a few have focused on adolescents who are not yet sexually active. Using data from nationally-representative surveys of adolescents, we assess the factors associated with HIV risk perception among sexually inactive adolescents in four sub-Saharan African countries at different stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda). The results show that there is no single influence on adolescents' HIV risk perception, but rather a range of individual, environmental and community factors such as schooling, knowledge about HIV, regional HIV prevalence and adolescents' social networks. These results can help better calibrate programs and policies addressing sexual and reproductive health issues among adolescents, a group that is disproportionately affected by new HIV infections.

The impact of childhood mortality on fertility in six rural thanas of Bangladesh.

In this article, we examine the relationship between child mortality and subsequent fertility using prospective longitudinal data on births and childhood deaths occurring to nearly 8000 Bangladeshi mothers observed over the 1982-1993 period, a time of rapid fertility decline. Generalized hazard-regression analyses are employed to assess the effect of infant and child mortality on the hazard of conception, with controls for birth order and maternal age and educational attainment. Results show that childhood mortality reduces the time to subsequent conception if the death occurs within a given interval, representing the combined effect of biological and volitional replacement. The time to conception is also reduced if a childhood death occurs during a prior birth interval, a finding that signifies an effect of volitional replacement of the child that died. Moreover, mortality effects in prior birth intervals are consistent with hypothesized insurance (or hoarding) effects. Interaction of replacement with elapsed time suggests that the volitional impact of child mortality increases as the demographic transition progresses. This volitional effect interacts with sex of index child. Investigation of higher-order interactions suggests that this gender-replacement effect has not changed over time.