Mobile phones, digital inequality, and fertility Longitudinal evidence from Malawi

In this paper, we introduce the digital revolution as a potential ingredient of sub-Saharan Africa's fertility transition. We focus on the relationship between mobile phone ownership and childbearing in southern Malawi, showing that mobile phone acquisition is associated with reductions in idea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDemographic research Vol. 42; pp. 1057 - 1096
Main Authors Billari, Francesco C., Rotondi, Valentina, Trinitapoli, Jenny
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften 2020
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Subjects
Access control
Cellular telephones
Demographic aspects
digital divide
Digital divide (Technology)
fertility transition
Fertility, Human
mobile phones
Research Article
social interaction
Malawi
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Summary:In this paper, we introduce the digital revolution as a potential ingredient of sub-Saharan Africa's fertility transition. We focus on the relationship between mobile phone ownership and childbearing in southern Malawi, showing that mobile phone acquisition is associated with reductions in ideal family size and lower overall parity among phone-owning women compared to their phone-less counterparts. We use nine waves of data from the Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) longitudinal study conducted in Balaka, Malawi, between 2009 and 2015. Fixed-effects panel data models shows that mobile phone ownership is associated with smaller ideal family size and lower parity during the study period. Cox proportional hazard models suggest that mobile phones are not fundamentally associated with the timing of women's first steps in family formation but rather with fertility trajectories on a longer time-horizon through child spacing. Furthermore, complementary cross-sectional analyses from a later survey round suggest that mobile phone ownership is associated with fertility through role modeling, preference change, and access to information. Mobile phone ownership is associated with fertility via role modeling, preference change,
ISSN:1435-9871
1435-9871
DOI:10.4054/DEMRES.2020.42.37