Do fertility preferences contribute to explaining fertility stalls in sub-Saharan Africa? Analysis in countries with strong evidence of fertility stalls

Although fertility in sub-Saharan Africa has decreased over the last 40 years, it remains at high levels. Moreover, halts and reversals in fertility decline have been observed in many countries. We use information from 27 DHS surveys of six countries where strong evidence of fertility stalls has been found. We compute TFR decomposing it by unintended birth outcomes (planned, mistimed, and unwanted fertility). Also, we compute TFR estimates from some scenarios to examine to what extent fertility stalls are explained by planned fertility and unintended fertility. Preliminary results show planned fertility explains 62% of births, meaning that two out of every five births are unintended. Reducing unmet need could lead to lower levels of fertility; however, fertility stalls persist even after meeting contraceptive needs. In most cases, fertility stalls are mainly explained by wanted fertility. Scenarios show that stall periods would have occurred even in the absence of unplanned births