Recent fertility patterns and population policy in South Africa¹

This article is part of a larger study on the relationship between fertility and poverty in South Africa. The author is grateful for financial support from the Union for African Population Studies.

Abstract

This article shows that beneath the declining trend reflected in national fertility data lies a potential for the rate of decline to slow down as a result of a relatively high level of fertility among African women who have never been married and those under the age of 30. Women in these two situations attract policy attention because of their critical roles in the rate at which fertility declines. National population policy that deals with such women must go beyond the traditional population activities to include programmes concerned with the socio‐economic background of the emergent patterns of reproductive behaviour.

Notes

Population Research Programme, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand.

This article is part of a larger study on the relationship between fertility and poverty in South Africa. The author is grateful for financial support from the Union for African Population Studies.