Policy Briefs

Malawi’s fertility rate has declined slowly in the context of a steady decline in child mortality over the past three decades. The average number of births per woman has declined from 7.6 in 1984 to 5.0 in 2014, while the number of deaths among children aged less than five years declined from 250 per 1000 births in 1984 to 85 in 2014.

Accelerating fertility decline to open the window of opportunity for harnessing the demographic dividend in Malawi