Researcher: Ayrton Altorio, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Supervisor: Prof. Nicole de Wet-Billings, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Climate change, as we know it, has been a key point of academic discussion for many decades. Throughout these years there has been scarce research interest directed towards the relationship between climate change and human fertility outcomes. This study aims to investigate the relationship between climate change and human fertility by employing Poisson regression analyses to longitudinal cross national data for 109 countries over the fifteen year time period spanning 2000 to 2015. Our dependent variable is Total Fertility Rate. The two main independent variables are associated with climate change and measure (1) annual precipitation levels and (2) percentage of arable land. The control variables span a range of demographic indicators that are known to be accurate predictors of TFR, such as GDP per capita. The results of our Poisson regression models indicate that both of our climate change indicators are significant in predicting change in TFR, with changes in arable land having the largest estimate of all our predictor variables.
