Abstract

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between fertility patterns and economic growth in Uganda us ing annual time-series data from 1990 to 2021. Motivated by the ongoing debate about whether high fertility hinders or fosters economic growth in developing economies (Galor, 2011; Ashraf et al., 2013), the study em ploys the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration (Pesaran et al., 2001) to estimate both short-term and long-term effects. Economic growth is represented by GDP per capita growth, while fertility is measured through the total fertility rate. The empirical results confirm a stable long term relationship among the variables. The findings indicate that fertility has a positive and statistically sig nificant impact on economic growth in the short run but a negative and economically meaningful effect in the long run. Robustness tests using an alternative fertility proxy and different lag structures verify the stability of the main results. These findings align with demographic transition and unified growth theories (Becker et al., 1990) and highlight the importance of fertility decline in supporting sustained long-term economic growth. Policy recommendations focus on strengthening family planning, promoting female education, and enhancing labour market absorption to maximise Uganda’s demographic dividend.

DOI: doi.org/10.63721/26JESD0145

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