Female labour force participation and its impact on fertility: the case of Urban West Region, Zanzibar

Fertility is one among the major components of population growth, and therefore constitutes an important development policy issue. This dissertation therefore examines the impact of labour force participation on fertility in Urban West region of Zanzibar. It also analyses the influence of labour force participation on age at first marriage and fertility. The number of children ever born was used as a measure of fertility. The study used both primary and secondary data sources. While secondary data sources were used for general review of literature and comparison of results with other studies done before, primary data was the main source used in this work. Face to face interview was used in the process of data collection and SPSS was used in the data analysis process. The results from this study show that the mean age at first marriage is 19.72 years. This implies that in the region age at marriage is still low leading to high fertility with mean children ever born of 5.01.Due to the existence of high fertility in the region, more effort should be made by policy makers aimed at the expansion of women's education so as to enable them to engage in skilful employment activities which will in turn reduce their fertility. The findings of this study may be used by policy makers in different types of planning, for instance, those focusing on education, labour force and gender issue.