Fertility, employment, and the demographic dividend in sub-Saharan African countries with incipient demographic transition: evidence from Mali

In this paper, we empirically explore the dynamic relationship between fertility, employment, and the demographic dividend in an African incipient demographic transition country namely, Mali. More precisely, we adopt a dynamic macro-econometric modeling approach to deal with the issue from 1990 to 2019. Our results indicate that employment has a direct and permanent positive effect on the demographic dividend in Mali as found by the literature. However and contrary to the conventional view in the literature, we interestingly find that fertility has a positive and significant long-run effect on the demographic dividend in Mali, although it seems to have non-significant short-run effects. Two persistent driving forces help to explain this fertility puzzle: (i) the desire of Malians to have a large family coupled with households’ low living standards, and (ii) the dominance of the informal economy. As families willingly grow, the situation progressively puts pressure on households and particularly on women to engage in informal employment to meet their additional needs. The increase in informal employment has in turn positive effects on the demographic dividend. This finding provides crucial policy implications for Malian policymakers, notably in terms of rethinking policies towards capturing an efficient demographic dividend through enhancing labor productivity in the informal economy, rather than focusing on fertility reduction policies.