"How Is Fertility Behavior in Africa Different?" conditionally accepted at Demography

My paper, "How Is Fertility Behavior in Africa Different?," has been conditionally accepted at Demography. The final version should follow soon. Until then, here is the abstract.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s fertility decline has progressed much slower than in other regions. Using large-scale woman-level data, I provide new evidence on how fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa compares to East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America by examining fertility outcomes by grade level across regions. Unlike prior research that focuses on aggregate fertility outcomes, I estimate fertility outcomes and total fertility rates separately by region, area of residence, age group, and grade level. I demonstrate that differences in fertility between Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions first increase and then decrease with years of education, with little consistent evidence for differences among better-educated women. Furthermore, for grade levels with significantly higher fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions, the differences are substantially smaller for surviving children compared to children ever born. To proxy for school quality, I use women’s literacy and show that the results for literacy rates follow a similar pattern to the fertility outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that offspring mortality and the lower quality of primary schooling are important contributors to higher fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to other regions.