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Family size preference among women in Nigeria

favour (Izugbara and Ezeh, 2010). Thus, it was expected that women in a polygynous union would be significantly more
likely to have IFS five and above, but the present study proved otherwise, confirming that the high fertility among them
is contrary to their desired family size. We welcome more research to shed light on this theme.
This study has limitations. One, the data are cross-sectional, thus, the estimates are for a particular time, and causal
inference cannot be made. A study that is based on a follow-up on the same respondents over time will provide more precise
insight into IFS as it changes over time, and mitigate bias arising from post rationalization. Furthermore, a qualitative
study will be useful to uncover some of the sociocultural and other reasons for large family size preferences in Nigeria.
However, this study contributes to the existing body of literature on fertility preferences, many of the findings support
past scientific research on family size preference. Furthermore, the findings elicited new insights on fertility preference
among sub-populations of women in Nigeria, areas for further research, and useful information for policy and program.
5. Conclusions
The results of this study show that there are signs of transition to four children as recommended in Nigeria’s population
policy and to lower family size regime of 0 – 3 children among women of higher socioeconomic status, women with more
positive gender ideology, residents in urban areas, and the South-south and Southwest regions. Given that women’s IFS
predicts realised fertility, there is a need to strengthen the factors that are associated with lower IFS and intervene in the
population groups that have high IFS for Nigeria to achieve her fertility reduction target.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the advice of Dr. Sunday Adedini during the initial conceptualization of this paper.
Funding

The author received no funding for this research.
Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.
Authors’ Contributions

There is only one author for this work.
Ethics Statement

The secondary data used for this study were accessed with the permission of ICF Macro International. All identifiers
were removed and ethical approval for the conduct of the surveys was granted by the National Ethics Committee in the
Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja, Nigeria, and the Ethics Committee of the Opinion Research Corporation of Macro
International Inc. Calverton, MB, USA.

Availability of Supporting Data

The supporting data for this manuscript is available on DHSprogram.com
References

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62 International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1