Abstract:
The present study attempts to examine the demand for children, identify the determinants of
demand for children in Gondar city at household level. Demand for children refers to the
number of children a couple is willing and able to have. To achieve this, a micro framework was
adopted and cross sectional data explored. The primary data source for this work was the
Gondar city household socio-economic data collected by undertaking a survey on 204
households. Households were classified into households who demand more than four and less or
equal to four; based on the Ethiopian national population policy. Out of the total population
59.31 percent shows their willingness to have more than four children. The rest 40.69 percent
households were demand less or equal four children. The logistic regression model results
indicates that among 11 explanatory variables included in the model, 5 were found factors
identified as strong predictors of demand for children include education level of wife, occupation
of wife, wife age at marriage, Current age of wife and family size. Finally, the study present the
policy measures could help to reduce the desired number of children. The results of the study
show that measures such as formal expansion of maternal education and encourage women’s
participation in the labor market. Important policy implication that can be drawn from this
result is the need to target such socio-economic variables in designing and implementing
population policy measures in Ethiopia
