African Transitions and Fertility Inequality: A Demographic Kuznets Hypothesis

Is Africa is different?" The question permeates the debate over Africa's fertility transitions, whether analysts ponder the causes, the consequences, or the socioeconomic patterns of these transitions. Do Africa's transitions occur at a lower threshold of economic development compared to, say, Latin American countries (Bongaarts and Casterline 2013; Bongaarts, this volume)? Will they yield a demographic dividend, as was the case among the Asian Tigers And do they spread evenly across socioeconomic groups, as was claimed for Western Europe, or, instead, do they trickle from top to bottom income groups in ways that increase what we refer to in this chapter as fertility inequality (Caldwell, Orubuloye, and Caldwell 1992; Shapiro and Tambashe 2002)?