Cultural forces tending to sustain high fertility in tropical Africa

Abstract

This paper addresses issues concerning the demand for family planning in Sub-Saharan Africa from a cultural and anthropological perspective. The authors attempt to identify cultural factors which may underlie persistently high levels of fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa, employing anthropological, sociological and survey evidence from across the continent. The authors argue that there is little current research into the extent of change in traditional belief systems or the likelihood of future change via secularization. They also argue that African political leaders have been reluctant to promote fertility reduction as related programs have been perceived as a form of foreign intervention and likely to fail due to the high value placed on children and fecundity. The authors conclude that future change will hinge on the pace of secularization of social beliefs and the developments, among leadership groups, of a belief that family planning programs can work in difficult administrative and cultural settings. The development of a few, small scale, family planning success stories is identified as a valuable step forward.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.