long-lasting effect of having experienced widowhood on women’s welfare and living standards, even if they remarry. In cross-country work, Djuikom and van de Walle (2018) shows that ever-widows and ever-divorced women have a lower nutritional status than women still in their first marriage across 20 countries in SSA, and that the negative impacts of widowhood even extend to an inter-generational transmission of poverty.

Under inheritance systems where only male descendants are entitled to inherit from the male head of household, having a son is a way for women to secure housing and to ensure access to land if their husband dies. Given the common age gap in SSA, widowhood is a likely risk, and women’s fertility behavior may be influenced by the widowhood insurance role of sons (Fapohunda and Todaro, 1988; Bledsoe and Hill, 1998). Lambert and Rossi (2016), for example, shows that women in Senegal who are most at risk in the case of widowhood tend to shorten birth spacing until they have a son.

Patrilocal traditions reinforce the supportive role of sons for their mothers. In places characterized by such traditions, married daughters tend to move away from their parents to their new husband’s household, while sons tend to stay near or even co-reside with their parents. Women are therefore more likely to benefit from day-to-day support from their sons than from their daughters (Garg and Morduch, 1998; Ezra, 2003). This pattern has clear implications for fertility decisions conditional on the existing gender distribution of children. In addition, given gender gaps in earnings between men and women in SSA (Arbache et al., 2010; O’Sullivan et al., 2014; World Bank, 2019), sons are more likely to have greater financial resources than daughters from which to provide for their parents in their old age.

# **2.1.3 Fertility and desired fertility**

Many different factors influence fertility and fertility preferences. Total lifetime fertility— i.e., the total number of children born to a woman—can be driven by the fertility preferences of the woman and her husband over the quantity, gender mix, and timing of children; age of marriage; access to modern contraception; and the extent to which women have a say in when and whether to marry, have sex, or use modern contraceptives. All of these determinants in turn can be influenced by factors such as educational and employment opportunities available to the girl/woman; household budget constraints; availability of childcare; considerations related to maternal and child health; child mortality rates; and considerations related to the ways in which children may eventually contribute to the household’s or parents’ financial well-being.

SSA has the world’s highest fertility rates, the highest desired fertility rates, and is also the world’s poorest region (Bongaarts, 2017; Bongaarts and Casterline, 2013). SSA’s high fertility rates and slow rate of fertility decline since the 1960s have attracted attention, especially as they have occurred against a backdrop of improvements in child mortality, contraception methods, girls’ schooling, and steeper fertility declines in every other world region including South Asia. Policymakers in particular worry about the impact of high fertility rates on the region’s development goals. When population growth exceeds economic growth, this can result in increased poverty. Higher fertility rates increase dependency ratios, making it more difficult for households to support and educate the next generation. When the bottom of the population pyramid grows faster, governments face fiscal implications, and may find it hard to maintain per pupil and per patient spending. High fertility rates are also 5