Three Essays on the Fertility Preferences of Rural Ghanaian Women: a Longitudinal Perspective

Attitudinal data are expected to be useful for the design and implementation of population policies and family planning programs. The reason for including questions on fertility attitudes and expectations in fertility surveys is the belief that such attitudes affect future fertility behavior. Despite the recognition that fertility preference data may provide useful insights for understanding future fertility behavior, most studies in sub-Saharan Africa rely on cross-sectional surveys which do not allow for examining the dynamic aspects of fertility preferences. As a result, research on the formation and stability of fertility preferences has received little attention. There is also little empirical work along the dominant line of research which investigates the predictive dimensions of fertility preferences. This dissertation focused on understanding the stability of individual stated preferences over time, the determinants of changes in preferences and the prediction of fertility outcomes by relating changes in stated preferences to subsequent pregnancy outcomes. This dissertation extends the body of literature on fertility preferences generally by its focus on the dynamic aspects of fertility preferences, and particularly for sub-Saharan Africa. In a 5-year prospective longitudinal study of a sample of Ghanaian women, I find that approximately 20 percent of the women would change their fertility preferences from one interview to the next. Women who had attained or exceeded their ideal family size showed considerable stability in the preference to stop childbearing over multiple interviews. The desire to stop childbearing was mainly driven by their perceptions of their husbands fertility desires and the attainment of the normative family size of four children. Prior stated preferences were also strongly predictive of subsequent pregnancy occurrence.