Suchergebnisse

The Rwandan Government has implemented various education policies that contribute to higher enrolment in education, but has become aware that these policies might be less effective for children from poor families. This study investigates the contribution of poverty reduction programmes on education expenditure of households. Using a multi-level regression analysis, combining district data on labour markets with detailed expenditure data on 7,230 households, it teases out the effects of several social protection programmes. The results show that access to health insurance and to waged work are positively related, while direct financial or in kind support are negatively related to paying into the children's schooling. Non-agricultural employment opportunities in particular seem to stimulate education investments. Reducing the vulnerability of households might provide more equal access to these opportunities.

SummaryMost studies on birth intervals and infant mortality ignore pregnancies that do not result in live births. Yet, fetal deaths are important in infant mortality analyses for three reasons: ignoring fetal deaths between two live births lengthens the measured interval between births, implying that short intervals are underestimated; the recommended inter-pregnancy interval (IPI) after a fetal loss is shorter (6 months) than after a live birth (24 months), as the effect of IPI on outcomes might differ according to the previous type of pregnancy outcome; fetal death will selectively reduce the population at risk of neonatal mortality, leading to biased results. This study uses the Heckman selection model to simultaneously estimate the combined effect of IPI duration and the type of pregnancy outcome at the start of the interval on pregnancy survival and neonatal mortality. The analysis is based on retrospective data from the Rwanda Demographic Health Surveys of 2000, 2005 and 2010. The results show a significant selection effect. After controlling for the selection bias, short (<6 months) and long (>60 months) intervals after a fetal death reduce the chances of pregnancy survival, but no longer have an effect on neonatal mortality. For intervals starting with a live birth, the reverse is true. Short intervals (<24 months) do not affect pregnancy survival but increase the odds of neonatal mortality. If the previous child died in infancy, the highest odds are found for neonatal death regardless of the IPI duration.

This contribution studies the variation in desired family size and excess fertility in four East African countries by analyzing the combined impact of wealth, education, religious affiliation, and place of residence. The findings show an enormous heterogeneity in Kenya. Wealthy and higher educated people have fertility desires close to replacement level, regardless of religion, while poor, uneducated people, particularly those in Muslim communities, have virtually uncontrolled fertility. Rwanda is at the other extreme: poor, uneducated people have the same desired fertility as their wealthy, educated compatriots, regardless of their religion—a case of "poverty Malthusianism.". The potential for family planning is high in both countries as more than 50% of the women having 5 children or more would have preferred to stop at 4 or less. Tanzania and Uganda have an intermediate position in desired family size and a lower potential for family planning. Generally, the main factor that sustains higher fertility is poverty exacerbated by religious norms among the poor only.

After having stalled in the 1990s, fertility in Rwanda resumed its downward trajectory between 2005 and 2010. The total fertility rate declined from 6.1 to 4.6 and modern contraceptive use increased. However, it is unclear which determinants lay behind the previous stall and the recent strong drop in fertility. This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the impact of social upheavals on fertility decline. We use a decomposition analysis, focusing on the change in characteristics and reproductive behaviour of women and their contributions to levels of fertility during 1992–2000 and 2000–2010. Results show that due to widowhood and separation the proportion of women who were married decreased between 1992 and 2000, but their fertility increased in the same period due to replacement fertility and an unmet need for family planning. After 2000, postponement of marriage and lower infant mortality contributed to lower fertility, but the most important effect is the overall lower fertility due not only to improved family planning provision but perhaps also to the sensitizing campaigns of the Rwandan government.

In 2007 Rwanda launched a campaign to promote 3 children families and a program of community based health services to improve reproductive health. This paper argues that mixed gender offspring is still an important insurance for old age in Rwanda and that to arrive at the desired gender composition women might have to progress beyond parity 3. The analyses are twofold. The first is the parity progression desire given the gender of living children. The second is gender specific replacement intention following the loss of the last or only son or daughter. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys of 2000, 2005, and 2010, we show that child mortality does not lead to extra parity progression beyond three, while having single gender offspring does and even more so when this is the result of the loss of the last son or daughter.

Chinese cities, especially large cities, are in urgent need of urban redevelopment but social conflicts in redevelopment processes have threatened social stability. Public participation has been stipulated in national policies to alleviate these conflicts and the responsibility to implement these policies has been delegated to local governments. Therefore, the features of public participation may differ between Chinese cities. Yet, a systematic investigation of this possible heterogeneity is lacking. This article adapts 11 features of governance to build a framework to compare public participation in urban redevelopment in Beijing and Guangzhou. Findings show that the two cities are similar in five features (policy instruments, policy integration, initiators, position of stakeholders, policy level at which citizens operate) but differ in six (policy goals, policy–science interface, power base of citizens, model of representation, rules of interaction and mechanisms of social interaction), making citizens in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou more powerful than their counterparts in Beijing. The observed shift towards urban micro-redevelopment might further strengthen the power of citizens in urban redevelopment in Beijing, but might weaken their power base in Guangzhou. The findings highlight the importance of local context and policy dynamics in the study of public participation in urban redevelopment in China.