DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION AND WOMEN EMPLOYMENT IN ECOWAS COUNTRIES

ABSTRACT

In recent times, employment has become an increasingly top priority for many developing countries since it is considered as capable of delivering poverty-reduction effects. This consideration is much more relevant when women’s economic opportunities are considered. In this study, the relationship between demographic transition and women employment in the ECOWAS sub-region was investigated. It is shown that, given the nature of labour markets and production in the sub-region, paying attention to the structure of the economies alone as a foundation for providing policy and research approach to employment issues in ECOWAS may underplay the fundamental challenges of employment in the region. The study included all countries in the ECOWAS countries in the analysis, using annual data that covered the period between 1991 and 2016. Given the nature of relationship between demographic factors and employment, a dynamic framework was devised for the study and the Fully Modified OLS and Dynamic OLS techniques were employed in the empirical analysis of the study. The study found that demographic transition has been weak for the ECOWAS countries in relation to fertility rates, while the transition has been more pronounced in terms of mortality rates. Also, it is shown that fertility rate did not have significant effects on women employment among ECOWAS countries. Indeed, where the effects were significant, they were mostly positive. The study also provided evidence that mortality rate had strong negative impacts on women employment in ECOWAS countries, while women employment was shown to effectively lower demographic transition among ECOWAS countries irrespective of the measurement used. Demographic transition that includes urbanisation was also shown to have the capacity of boosting overall women employment in the ECOWAS sub-region. The outcomes of the empirical results imply that, while poor changes in fertility rates in ECOWAS countries presents challenges for women employment, adequate demographic transition actually leads to improvement in women employment for the ECOWAS sub-region. Moreover, policies aimed at ensuring demographic transition among ECOWAS countries were demonstrated to be indirectly aimed at improving women employment in the sub-region.