Contraception increase dramatically at each parity as the number of sons increase. The study indicates that rural families, which are more likely to exhibit strong son preference, have lower contraception rates than urban families. The Malthusian remedy of encouraging marriage postponedment through enhanced educational opportunities appear to be an important policy variable for reducing population growth. Although the Code d Ivoire has been generally regarded one of the few economics success stories in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet it has been widely attacked for lagging in social and health investments as well as for regional inequality. Today one third of the children who die worldwide every day are African although they constitute little more than 10 per cent of the world s child population.
More children die every day in Mozambique than in all the countries of the former Soviet Union.
In 1990s seven African countries Angola, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia and the Sudan have all been torn by civil war. In Rwanda alone, at least 200,000 children have been orphaned or separated from their families. Africa is the most under-educated continent. Although primary school enrolment rose dramatically during the 1970s, from 65 to 90 percent for boys and from 44 to 69 per cent for girls, under the weight of the economic crisis of the last decade, both rates fell by roughly sever per cent, with the quality of education also showing sign of deterioration. Education spending per capita in developed countries is namely 20 times that of Africa.