Assessing the Impact of Migrations on Fertility in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Abdramane Soura, Université de Ouagadougou

Fertility remains high in Burkina Faso as a whole, but not in the capital city, Ouagadougou. Formal neighborhoods, in the center of the city, are surrounded by informal areas devoid of public services. A Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) has been settled in 2008. The total fertility rate is 1.8 children per woman in the formal areas followed, as against 3.5 in informal areas. Composition effects and differences in fertility preferences and unmet needs for family planning are not sufficient to explain this large gap, which may be due, at least partially, to an artifact. Migration to the city and, even more, migration from formal areas to informal areas, seem to be highly related to fertility behavior, so that TFRs may be biased by selective migrations. Our aim in this paper is to model jointly migrations and fertility in order to check whether selective migrations could explain these differences.