The Response of Marital Fertility to Short term Macroeconomic Crisis An Event History Analysis, Ethiopia: 1973-2011

Sammanfattning: Abstract: This thesis combined the individual level longitudinal data, from the 2011 Ethiopian demographic and health survey, with annual GDP and price indicators, to examine the response of marital fertility to short term macroeconomic stress that Ethiopians has been facing in the last forty years. A two-level discrete time random effect models were employed to estimate the risk of next birth. Rural households, landed and agrarians responded strongly to short term economic stresses. The death of the previous child, education and service sector employment are important moderates of the effect of economic hardships. Strong and significant response is observed only in the second year after the crisis, which evidenced to the absence of planned and deliberate birth controls in this agrarian society. Instead, it pointed to the importance of temporary migration of family member as a coping mechanism to shocks. Similarly, a crisis –induced malnutrition was a plausible mechanism to lower marital fertility in the second year of economic crisis. The study calls for policy measures in improving the productivity and diversified income sources of the small holder agrarians, and reduction of infant and child mortality as a an important tool to lower total fertility rate in the country.