Family Planning: The Anchor behind the Sub-Saharan African Fertility Progression

Rapid population growth strain countries’ developmental progress. It is confirmed among scholars that fertility have decelerated in most of the countries in the recent past. Scholars have concentrated on wide range of factors associated with fertility majorly at the national scale with some opining that analysis of trends and differentials in the various fertility parameters have been discussed expansively. However, others believe that considerably limited attention has been paid to the fertility preference- a pathway through which various variables act on fertility. The Sub-Saharan African countries’ discrepancies amid almost similarities in policies is a cause of concern to demographers. One would also point at the insufficient synergies that have been focused on the fertility preference as well, especially at the macro scale. Exploiting Bongaarts reformulation of Easterlin and Crimmins (1985) conceptual structure, the understanding of the current transition based on the fertility preference in general would help to provide explanations to the observed latest dynamics. This study therefore is an attempt to explain the current fertility transition through women’s fertility preference. Results reveal that indeed fertility transition is on course in most of the sub-Saharan countries with huge disparities in fertility preferences and its implementation indices.