Abstract
The fertility transition of Rwanda stagnated between 1992 and 2005 at a total fertility rate (TFR) of 6 children per woman. After 2005 the fertility decline resumed its course and the TFR dropped remarkably fast till 4.6. The period of the fertility stall coincided with a very disruptive period in
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Rwanda’s history. A civil war, culminating in a genocide and massive refugee flows undermined the society and destroyed the country’s infrastructure, The broad objective of this thesis is to uncover the mechanisms that relate the disrupting events in Rwanda to fertility behaviour during and after the crisis. This thesis also intends to explore the drivers of the second shift in fertility after 2005. Finally it analyses the relation between conflict-related migration and fertility to bring additional empirical evidence to the inconclusive existing literature on this subject. This research illustrates that to understand the relation between conflict, fertility and migration the multi-dimensionality of this relation must be taken as a starting point. The impact of indirect factors on fertility, however, display through the classical direct factors of mating, risk of conception (use of contraceptive methods), chances on a live birth. Four important contributions are highlighted in this research. The first is that fertility preferences do matter in explaining actual fertility and fertility control. In particular de loss of own children and pregnancy losses (replacement effect) contributed to an increase of desired family size after 1992. But also women who did not experienced those losses wanted on average more children in 2000 and 2005. This could be interpreted as an insurance effect, a reaction on the massive killings. The second is that in the wake of the conflict several mechanisms have opposing effects on fertility. In decomposing age-standardised fertility we could show that in Rwanda the negative separation effect outweighed the positive replacement and contraceptive effects, yet also showed that the ones in a union had higher fertility after the conflict than before. The third is that migration is part of the relation between conflict and fertility in Rwanda. As the conflict spread over the whole country, many of the non-migrants may have lost their husband in the killings or got separated due to his flight abroad. Displaced and refugee women did suffer more from the conflict as they lost more children and more pregnancies. The replacement of these losses accounted for their higher level of fertility compared to non-migrants, to voluntary migrants and women returned from exile, at least after controlling for the better socio-economic position of the latter two groups. The fourth contribution is the issue of ‘breaking into time’. Looking back over a longer period (20 years) we could not only go back to the onset of the stall in fertility decline, but also capture the mechanism in the resumption of this decline. After 2005 the desired family size dropped fast and thanks to an enormous improvement of reproductive health facilities and of general access to it, women could better regulate their births.
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