Population Measures in Rwanda
Population surge has become a significant issue for most governments, especially with the effects of climatic changes that make food production to decline significantly. The results are difficulties for the governments feeding her people and widespread unemployment and congestion. Various governments have put in place measures for controlling population such as the number of children policy and birth controls. Some government population measures are successful while some face stiff resistance from the broader communities due to diverse underlying aspects.
Research Study on Population Measures in Rwanda
This paper analyses a research study conducted on the population measures adopted in Rwanda. The study aimed at establishing a link between gender preference and the size of the family and analyzing how child mortality affects fertility. The researchers acknowledged that no previous studies had been conducted linking death and gender preference to a population surge in Africa. As such, the study aimed at feeling the gap left by previous studies.
Article Summary
Objectives
It is the desire of couples, regardless of which part of the world they come from, to have children from both male and female sexes. The study noted that women would prefer an equal number of boys and girls in the family. Rwanda attributes explicitly fertility to having children from both genders. In situations where there exist unequal proportion of male and female children, parents would seek to give birth more to achieve the desired family composition. Consequently, leading to children exceeding the desired number of three. Male preference alludes to the deep cultural ties that hold men responsible for lineage continuation and property rights especially land.
Even though preference for males remains relatively high, most Rwandese believe it is safe to have both sexes in a family. However, gender composition takes absolute favorite especially with the shrinking of family size. As the number of family members reduces greater preference is given to the boy child, couples strive to have additional children with the aim of getting more sons leading to expanding of the family beyond the desired. Most families believe that diminishing family numbers can contribute to lineage erosion or low self-esteem for fathers.
Research Methodology
The study utilized three secondary data sets in a cross-sectional fashion from the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) of Rwanda held in the year 2000, 2005 and 2010 respectively. Questionnaires were distributed to women between the ages of 15 and 49 years and covered a wide range of aspects such as the respondent’s background, history of fertility and knowledge and previous or current use of various forms of contraceptives. The dependent variable in the study was the women’s desire to have an extra child. Two sets of questions were asked depending fertility status of women to test their productivity intentions.
For those women who had no children or were unsure whether they were pregnant, they asked whether or not they had intentions of giving birth. Women who were pregnant asked whether they would like or not to have an additional child. Because the research was limited to gender preference and mortality, only women with three or more living children interviewed. A total of 12,831 women were interviewed, subdivided into 4219, for the year 2000, 4219 for the year 2005 and 4867 for the year 2010.
The independent variables of the study were: genders of all the children alive and death of all children falling in a specific gender. However, the study did not include a deceased child's parity neither did it check the position of the dead child in the family, whether first born or lastborn. The classified respondents as those with children from both genders alive, those with children of one gender, those with three or more living children from both sexes but without any prior experience of mortality, and those with children from a specific gender and have previous experience of losing a child. To further test the strength of gender preference, the respondents were classified using economic aspects, demographic aspects and the socio-cultural dimensions.
The study employed a bivariate design to check the effects due to death of a child and gender composition- yi to denote if a mother desires another child and yo if she does not desire. Further, an SPSS aspect, Binary Logistic Regression was used for model estimation purposes.
Research Findings and Conclusion
From the study, gender preference has changed significantly over the years, with more women preferring to have the same number of boys and girls. In the year 2000 many respondents favored having 3 or more of each gender, in 2005 women preferred having 2 children from both genders, however, 2010 the situation changes tremendously with respondents preferring to have 2 sons and one daughter. The study concluded that even though Rwandan women would prefer having the same number of children, but in the case of unevenness they would prefer to have more sons than daughters. The researchers linked their findings to deeply rooted cultures that favor men more.
Conclusion
An analysis of the study reveals that the research was conducted correctly and covered all the objectives outlined. The findings of the survey also to a large extent attest the hypothesis of the study. Moreover, Demographic Health Surveys employed are internationally reliable because of their strict data collection and storage methods because of the highly trained and experienced staff and enumerators. Also, the questionnaires were exhaustive and virtually covered all aspects of the study. However, other factors like deceased child's parity and position of the dead child were left out but did not in any way affect the outcome of the study. The research is a useful resource material recommendable.
