The relation between war, starvation, and fertility ideals in sub-Saharan Africa: A life-history perspective

In this article, we investigate the relations between extreme environmental harshness during childhood and personal fertility ideals in pre-reproductive students from an African sample. The study is inspired by biological models of predictive adaptive responses (PAR) for individual reproductive schedules in the context of Life-History Theory (LHT). In line with theoretical models of external and internal environmental cues, we tested whether war and starvation during childhood differentially predict personal fertility ideals in African students with regard to their desired number of offspring and their desired age of first reproduction. The data was collected in eight different countries from sub-Saharan Africa with an overall sample size of N = 392. Neither war nor starvation were related to the desired age at first reproduction. However, starvation significantly predicted the desired number of offspring. Furthermore, we found a weak (yet statistically significant) negative correlation between the desired number of offspring and the desired age at first reproduction. The results are discussed in light of current models of individual life-histories in humans.