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M. Ecker:
"Tanzania - Fertility, Education, Future Population Size and Composition";
Supervisor: W. Lutz; Institut für Sozialpolitik, WU Wien, 2015.

The goal of this thesis is to explore how different education and fertility scenarios affect long term population growth and composition in Tanzania. Tanzania is an especially interesting and relevant case as the country has passed through a phase of high population growth and is currently already experiencing a slight decline in fertility with an average of 5.4 children per woman today (compared to 5.7 in 2005). Fertility is still considered a very pressing issue in public policy and lowering it is an explicit policy goal.

For this purpose micro data from the Demographic and Heath Surveys (DHS) is analyzed to identify factors determining fertility decisions, including education. In a second step population projections along cohort lines for different scenarios regarding educational development and future fertility are carried out.

The novelty of this approach lies with the education and fertility scenarios chosen for the projections: Whereas education scenarios do not only include a global education trend but also the attainment of the newly suggested Millennium Development Goal (universal primary and secondary education for all in 2030), the fertility scenarios presented includes trends towards decreasing the gap between observed and women´s desired family sizes that can be observed today, based on DHS data. Compared to previous studies, the aim of this study is to specify scenarios relevant to Tanzania via the inclusion of policy-relevant scenarios for the country and the combination of micro data, a population projection model and in-depth literature review.

By including education scenarios, population projections become on the one hand more accurate as all three fundamental demographic components (fertility, mortality and migration) are strongly affected by education. At the same time their explicit variation will make the impact of different education scenarios on Tanzania´s demographic development visible. Tanzanian women with secondary or higher education had less than half as many children as women with no education in 2010, with 3.0 compared to 7.0.

Fertility scenarios make it possible to vary a decisive (and hard to estimate) factor in future population development. The inclusion of three different scenarios geared towards the realization of women´s desired family sizes and a thus decrease in unmet need for contraception also provides answers as to how this may affect population growth, in addition to crucial and necessary individual (health) benefits. By using different fertility trends assumed by the United Nations it is also possible to elaborate on the additional leeway in family size (by education) that may be gained from investments in education.

The results provide insights into how improvements in the educational sector, such as reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goal of universal primary and secondary education by 2030 and helping women to realize their desired family size may affect population growth and composition until the year 2060. They show that an increase in female education combined with comprehensive family planning and sexual and reproductive health education may provide to be a good instrument to address the urgent issue of population growth via fewer children per woman and at the same time more productive future generations, providing leverage for demographic challenges to come.

demography fertility education Tanzania population projection

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_237711.pdf