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We examine recent fertility trends in Ethiopia for evidence of short- and long-term responses to famine, political events, and economic decline. We use retrospective data on children ever born from the 1990 National Family and Fertility Survey to estimate trends in annual marital conception probabilities, controlling for women's demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The results of our analysis provide evidence of significant short-term declines in conception probabilities during years of famine and major political and economic upheaval. In the longer term, marital fertility in both urban and rural areas declined in the 1980s after increasing moderately in the 1970s.
From 1974 to 1991, Ethiopia was wracked by political instability, war, famine, and economic decline. The short- and long-term effects of these events on fertility in Ethiopia are not well documented. Demographic theory is ambiguous with respect to the likely effects of recent political and economic events in Ethiopia on marital fertility. The riskinsurance approach to fertility emphasizes the insurance role of children under conditions of generalized, long-term economic insecurity (Cain 1981, 1983; Clay and Vander Haar 1993; DeVos 1985; Nugent 1985; Thomas 1991): In societies where parents are dependent on their adult children for financial support in old age, there is a strong incentive for couples to have many children to guarantee some minimum income level. In addition to providing old-age security, economically active children are a potential source of economic support for parents during temporary declines in income due to illness, unemployment, or business or crop failure (Caldwell, Reddy, and Caldwell 1986). Given the pervasive income insecurity in Ethiopia before the 1970s, the most recent series of events may have reinforced existing incentives for high fertility.
There are also compelling reasons to expect short-term and long-term declines in Ethiopian fertility as an outcome of the political and economic turmoil. Assuming conscious control of fertility within marriage, conventional microeconomic theory predicts that couples will delay births in response to sudden declines in income or increased uncertainty about future income streams. Studies of preindustrial European and contemporary third world populations consistently find that short-term swings in economic well-being are followed by similar shifts in fertility (Galloway 1988; Lee 1990; Palloni, Hill, and Aguirre 1996). Longer-term declines in fertility in response to more sustained economic downturns have...