Strategic fertility in the Muslim community in Cameroon

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to determine what motivates Muslims to make more children. To do this, this study builds a variable that assigns to each woman in the sample the share of her religious group in the area of residence. One woman's fertility here is measured by the number of children already made. A key variable for this study is the parents' bargaining power, which for a given parent, measures the proportion of their religion in their region of residence. Our empirical study initially takes two samples, one at the national level and the other for the Muslim group only. The regressions are done using the method of the Least Ordinary Square. The results of our analyses show that in Cameroon fertility was higher in the Muslim community in 2005. In addition, from the observable variables, we found that the key factors driving this group to high fertility are: minority status, mortality rate and rural residence. Moreover, we found that low educational attainment and low participation in the labour force of Muslim women are obstacles to reducing their fertility.

Date of Award	6 Jun 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	David De La Croix (Supervisor) & Marie Seleck (Co-Supervisor)