Economic analysis and policy implications of fertility in Middle East and North African countries

Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, Jan, 2006 by Azmat Gani, Christopher Ngassam

Urbanisation

Urbanised populations have lower fertility rates than rural populations in developed nations (Eberstadt, 1980 and Schultz, 1993). Urbanisation is expected to depress aggregate fertility rates as the level of awareness of the consequences of higher fertility rates is expected to be greater. Urban areas provide better access to education, wider employment opportunities, higher incomes, more comprehensive information flows, and offers family planning services. Therefore, these factors contribute positively towards parental decision making with an expected smaller family. Thus, fertility should be inversely correlated with urbanisation.

Female labour force participation rate

A factor that is likely to influence the rate of fertility is the status of women. A change in status of women can be brought about through education and their levels of participation in the labour market. With greater participation in the labour market, it is likely that young, married couples are in a better position to bargain over family size, where smaller is better, eventually influencing the fertility rates.

Family Planning

Schultz (1997) notes that the capacity to avoid unwanted fertility is a form of human capital which enhances female market productivity by allowing women to continue their education, to migrate to where their skills are most valued, or to allocate time to their most rewarding work. An active family planning service is expected to influence fertility as it brings about greater awareness of birth control and is effective in helping eliminate inefficiency with the introduction of modern contraceptive methods. This should result in a drop in fertility rates. Effective family planning programs are known to result in longer birth spacing and a reduction in infant mortality (Dasgupta, 1993).

DESCRIPTION OF DATA

The countries chosen in this study for the empirical work comprises a sample of ten MENA countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates. While there are twenty countries in the MENA region (The World Bank, 2003), the choice of these ten countries was solely dictated by the availability of published data on variables of interest as discussed in section two. Unfortunately, not all MENA countries have a consistent set of data, and where data is available the time span is limited. Since the sample time frame for the dependent variable has to be consistent with the explanatory variables, all variable measures were restricted to 1990-2000, with all data taken from the World Bank World Development Indicators CD-ROM (2003).

In terms of variable measures, fertility rate is the average number of children that would be born alive to a woman in her lifetime. Income is measured by real per capita GNP. Infant mortality rate is the number of infants per thousand live births, in a given year, who die before reaching one year of age. Female education is measured by gross enrolment of females of all ages at primary level as a percentage of children in the country's primary school age group. Urban population as a percentage of total population measures urbanisation. Female labour force participation is female labour force as a percentage of total labour force. Because measures of family planning are deficient across MENA countries, a dummy was used. A value of one was allocated to Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia, supported by the fact that these countries revealed contraceptive prevalence rate. For example, the contraceptive prevalence rate during 1990-96 was 51 percent in Algeria, 48 percent in Egypt, 40 percent in Syria and 60 percent in Tunisia (The World Bank, 1999). It was assumed that contraceptive prevalence rates existed in these countries even prior to 1990 but perhaps at a lower rate. Zeros were allocated to countries other than Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. This means absence of effective family planning programs.