Urbanisation, household composition and the reproductive health of women in a South African city

Post-apartheid South Africa is faced with the effects of a distorted urbanisation process. A coherent response to urbanisation includes the mitigation of the adverse health effects of urbanisation. Women, by virtue of the stringent control of their movements to urban areas under apartheid, have migrated to the urban areas at an increasing rate recently. One consequence has been the transformation of traditional household structures consonant with changing patterns of fertility and infertility in the urban areas. This paper describes the composition of households in Khayelitsha, South Africa, a suburb that has seen an explosive increase in population over a 5-year period, from 5000 to an estimated 250,000 people. A survey of 659 households revealed that woman-headed households increased from 11% in those women who had been in the urban areas for fewer than 5 years, to 35% in those who had been in the urban areas for more than 20 years. This was not a function of widowhood or divorce, but appears to be an adaptive strategy adopted by women in the face of gender oppression in a harsh urban environment. The study also revealed the phenomenon of "alliance" household formation, in which atypical households made up of a variety of non-descript combinations of people provide support for women from remote rural areas, another adaptive strategy. Fertility was related to age, income, education and urbanisation. Women who had been in the urban areas for longer than 10 years had a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.5, while those who had been in the urban areas for less than 10 years had a TFR of 5.8. Reported infertility was related to marital status, education, gynaecological illness and urbanisation, with recently urbanised women reporting more infertility. This probably reflects the different expectations of rural women and changes the mix of attitudes to fertility in the urban areas substantially. These findings have major implications for population policies in South Africa and an eclectic mix of approaches, including small area-specific approaches, to family spacing is recommended.