TY - JOUR AU - Conley,Dalton AU - McCord,Gordon C. AU - Sachs,Jeffrey D. TI - Africa's Lagging Demographic Transition: Evidence from Exogenous Impacts of Malaria Ecology and Agricultural Technology JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 12892 PY - 2007 Y2 - February 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12892 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12892.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Dalton Conley New York University 249 West 29th Street #2E New York, NY 10001-5230 Tel: 212/998-7580 Fax: 212/995-4140 E-Mail: conley@nyu.edu Gordon C. McCord The Earth Institute at Columbia University 314 Low Library 535 West 116th Street, MC 4327 New York, NY 10027 E-Mail: gm2101@columbia.edu Jeffrey D. Sachs The Earth Institute at Columbia University 314 Low Library 535 West 116th Street, MC 4327 New York, NY 10027 Tel: 212/854-8704 Fax: 212/854-8702 E-Mail: sachs@columbia.edu AB - Much of Africa has not yet gone through a "demographic transition" to reduced mortality and fertility rates. The fact that the continent's countries remain mired in a Malthusian crisis of high mortality, high fertility, and rapid population growth (with an accompanying state of chronic extreme poverty) has been attributed to many factors ranging from the status of women, pro-natalist policies, poverty itself, and social institutions. There remains, however, a large degree of uncertainty among demographers as to the relative importance of these factors on a comparative or historical basis. Moreover, econometric estimation is complicated by endogeneity among fertility and other variables of interest. We attempt to improve estimation (particularly of the effect of the child mortality variable) by deploying exogenous variation in the ecology of malaria transmission and in agricultural productivity through the staggered introduction of Green Revolution, high-yield seed varieties. Results show that child mortality (proxied by infant mortality) is by far the most important factor among those explaining aggregate total fertility rates, followed by farm productivity. Female literacy (or schooling) and aggregate income do not seem to matter as much, comparatively. ER -