Fertility behaviour and its correlates in Botswana, 1988

Authors' abstract: This paper presents a preliminary analysis of secondary data coming from the 1988 Botswana Family Health Survey-II . The primary aim of the analysis is to find out how demographic strategies interplay (notably, how fertility is affected by other demographic behaviours), how they vary according to socio-economic factors and what information is needed to accertain these relationships. The secondary aim of the analysis is to help the preparation of the questionnaire which will be used in the fieldwork during the 4ERP (4th European Research Project, on "Land use and fertility"). One of the purposes of the 4ERP is to verify the relationships between fertility behaviour and landholding (which includes distribution and characteristics of the land, access to water, and the like, especially in the drylands). This is especially interesting in Botswana, since recent estimates suggest that there may have been a very rapid decline of more than two births per woman between 1981 and 1988 (Rutenberg and Diamond, 1993). The fertility decline seems to be linked to a deterioration in the social and economic conditions (following a major drought in the early 1980s), and to the increased availability of family planning services in the same period. This paper analyses some background characteristics of Tswana women which can help to explain their fertility behaviour, such as educational level, place of residence, religion and the use of contraceptive methods. Unfortunately, economic questions included in the BFHS-II questionnaire proved too few to be really informative in this respect.