Collaborative Research: Social Context of Fertility Decisions in Tanzania

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This project is a collaborative study by an anthropologist from Brown University and a demographer from Harvard, studying the process of fertility transition in Tanzania in the context of global economic changes. The basic question is to explain why a transition from high fertility and no use of birth control to low fertility and the widespread use of birth control is happening in one ethnic group, in the context of changes in the regional ecology and economy. The basic economy is shifting away from hoe agriculture towards wage labor, which is impacting social relations and shifting the traditional patriarchal lineage authority towards more couple-centered relations. The major hypotheses of the study is that a shift towards a conjugal union where partners communicate about decisions and the interests of men and women converge is instrumental in facilitating the acceptance of fertility limitation. Using techniques of ethnography to establish the local manifestation of crucial social, kinship and family relations as they are instituted on the household level, local surveys to extend the micro-level ethnographic insights to a regional level, and intensive interviews with a sample of couples on their joint decision-making and communication styles, the project will show how these global changes are working out in this one region of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Two villages will be compared, a Muslim somewhat more traditional and a Lutheran somewhat less traditional community. This research is part of a broad attempt to understand the linkages between ecology, production activities and social relations which affect fertility transitions from high to low reproduction. It follows a new wave of research which links female autonomy and fertility to the social and economic context. As such the results will be significant and useful to population planners in other areas of the developing world which face similar situations.