How Much Is Enough? A Longitudinal Analysis of Intentions to Stop Childbearing in Rural Mozambique

Sarah R. Hayford, Arizona State University
Victor Agadjanian, Arizona State University

Given the unpredictability of social, economic, and demographic outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, some demographers have argued that women difficulty forming long-term plans for fertility and have challenged the utility of reported desires to stop childbearing. But despite these conceptual challenges, intentions to stop childbearing have predictive power. This paper uses three waves of survey data collected in rural southern Mozambique to study stability and change in the desire to stop childbearing. This extended abstract presents bivariate statistics describing aggregate and individual-level change in the desire to stop childbearing. The completed paper will apply multivariate models to assess the degree to which these changes are shaped by purely demographic factors (age, parity) and by other individual and household characteristics (health, marriage and marriage characteristics, household economic circumstances, etc.). Results will be used to consider the theoretical and empirical relevance of target models of fertility in sub-Saharan Africa.