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Chantelle Ngwenya, FHI360/Zimbabwe Health Interventions
Premarital fertility, defined as childbearing before first marriage, is an under researched topic with key socio-economic and demographic impacts in sub-Saharan Africa. Using DHS data, this research employs direct estimation and time-to-event analyses to investigate changes in levels of, and factors associated with timing of premarital first births since the onset of Zimbabwe’s fertility transition. The results show that premarital fertility was moderate and constant, on average 0.7 children per woman between 1988 and 2015, making it an unlikely contributor to the stall of overall fertility decline. Although premarital childbearing remained concentrated among young women; since 2005, incidences of premarital first births increased among older women and decreased among adolescents. Delaying sexual activity and attaining formal education decreased the risk of premarital childbearing. However, Ndebele women with history of contraceptive use resident in Matebeleland regions bore a significantly higher risk, thereby indicating a strong ethnic and cultural bias in premarital childbearing. Strong evidence of the effect of migration and tourism on premarital fertility in border and tourism towns prompts for research on sexual behaviour and fertility among border and tourism town residents who interact with but are neither migrants nor tourists.
Keywords: Culture, ethnicity, race, religion and language, Fertility and childbirth, Migrant populations, Age structure