What do experts think about the future fertility of African countries?

Anne Goujon, Vienna Institute of Demography and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Regina Fuchs, WU Vienna, Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital
Wolfgang Lutz, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

We will present the result of an exercise which is part of the IIASA-Oxford expert-based demographic and education projection project to be released in 2012. The end product will consist of projections of the population of all world countries to 2050 by age, sex, and education levels. For all determinants of the projection (fertility, mortality, migration, education) a questionnaire will be sent early June to a large number of individuals (members of population associations, statistical offices, and other key researchers). The presentation will deal with results for African countries, where future fertility trends are already the object of speculation especially considering the diversity of experiences: from countries completing the fertility transition to countries that have barely started. The questionnaire is structured around five forces under which some arguments are presented to which the evaluator will be asked to agree or not and to rate its potential influence on future fertility.