Evolving Gender Attitudes and Fertility Preferences: A Study of Young Women in Five sub-Saharan African Countries

Declining fertility preferences are recognized as a key driver of fertility reduction in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing the need to understand their determinants and evolution. This study investigates how the relationship between gender attitudes and desired fertility has changed over time among young women aged 15–24.
Using Demographic and Health Surveys from Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, and Zambia, we analyze country-specific associations between attitudes towards wife beating and ideal number of children across four consecutive surveys spanning approximately 15 years. A pooled cross-country model includes a context-specific education measure to assess its moderating effect on the association.
Findings show that tolerance of wife beating is linked to higher desired fertility in all countries at one or more time points, though the strength and direction of this relationship vary over time and by context. As egalitarian gender attitudes spread, women endorsing gender equality begin to diverge from high-fertility norms, while those holding traditional attitudes remain pronatalist, widening the gap in fertility preferences between the two groups.
This shift is more likely in countries where the national average of women's education is relatively high (more than 4.5 years), suggesting that rising education fosters both egalitarian attitudes and changing fertility ideals.