According to (Mulholland, 1991) Culture is a set of shared and enduring meaning, values and belief that characterized national, ethnic or other groups and orient their behavior.
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge , experience ,belies ,values ,attitudes ,meaning ,hierarchies ,religious ,notion of times, roles , spatial relations , concept of the universe and material object antd possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. (Hofstede G. , 1997)
Culture, is characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religious, cuisine, social habit, music and arts. (Zimmermann, 2017)
Culture can categoriesed into two types material and non material culture, whereby non material culture involve things that are intangible example morals, altitudes, beliefs and values. On other side, material culture involves things which are tangible example buildings, wearing style, and artifacts.
Human fertility remains high in many countries because cultural values influence parents to procreate many children. Culture has great impacts to fertility rate this can be seen through elements of culture, example polygamist altitude, this is altitude of having more than wife. Example Saudi Arabia is practicing this and is among of countries with high population. This has influenced high fertility rate and increase of population.
The following are the elements of culture which influence high fertility rate,
Religion beliefs refer to the set of assumptions that someone believe to be true. Example religious beliefs, Islam and Christian. Religious views are integrated with various cultural factors in encouraging human reproduction rates. for example in bible Genesis 1: 27-28 So god create man in his own image in the image of god he created him, male and female created them, and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be trustful and multiply band fill the earth and subdue it. (Jennings, 1970)
In Christian, In Roman Catholicism, marriage became a sacrament intended to sanctify conjugal activity primarily for producing offspring. Also in Muslim countries, for instance Turkey considers contraceptives illegal but is quite lenient in penalizing abortionists. Therefore this has Influenced high fertility rate and increase of population.
Marriage, this is a universal in most of the society. It is important demographic variable influencing fertility since most births take place within marriage in many traditional societies. A lower age marriage provides a long reproductive span and results in high fertility in the society. For example in many society belief that marriage is a way to have high number of children because they belief that either men or women after puberty can get marriage, so this can increase the number of children within the society. (Ryder, 1959)
Family, is among of the factor for the growth of the population regardless of family members, for example polygamy family can increase the number of the children when father have more than one wife can can produce more children because they beliefs that can helps in their different activities especially maasai tribe not only but also ruguru tribe prefer to have high number of children, so this cause the number of children. (s, mathew P.S and Rebecca, 2009)
Cultural beliefs, influencing fertility to the society because many of the people to the society have different belief about fertility which influencing the increasing of number of children to the country because most of people belief that birth many of children it facilitate to production of activities, it improve life of satisfaction and partner relationships, prestige and it increase the number of the clan, so due this facilitate many of culture like sukuma, maasai birth of most of children to their family.
Poverty is the scarcity or the lack of a certain (variant) amount of material possessions or money. Poverty is also a multifaceted concept, which may include social, economic and political elements. There are two types of poverty which are absolute poverty and relative poverty. (Ricardo, 2008)
Absolute poverty refers to a set of standard which is consistent over time and between countries or is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health ,shelter, education and information .it depends not only on income but also on access to services (Declaration, 1995)
Relevant poverty refers to socially defined and dependent on social context, hence relative poverty measures the income inequality, usually relative poverty is measured as the percentage of the population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income for example Gini coefficient or the Theil index. (Raphael, 2009)
Poverty can be caused by various factors such as slavery and conquest of these are historical causes , the primary causes of poverty are such as epidemic diseases, lack of control in local food ,lack of access of education, overpopulation and corruption.
Relationship between poverty and fertility,
Relying of household in primitive farming technologies and demand for cheap labor; this is mostly practiced in developing countries like Tanzania, of which they lack advanced technologies which will be help them in agriculture activities such as farming and livestock keeping. Therefore they decide to use their member of the family who are their children as cheap labor. This means that they demand for high number of children which will be used as cheap labor in agricultural activities. This reason has positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is that they will produce more food and the negative impact is that those children who are used as cheap labor will remain as dependants in their families. (Aassve, 2005)
Lack of state benefits and pensions to old age group; for example in Tanzania not all organization do provide benefits and pensions, otherwise one decide to join social fund like LAPF and NSSF . But you might find not all people can afford the required money that is needed to join the social fund. This is seen to the majority of people who experience absolute poverty in Tanzania. Therefore they see the solution of such problem is to demand an increase in number of children which will help their parents in provision of means of insurance and security in old age. Therefore some of the children succeed to provide such services to their parents but some fail because their poverty situation that they experience.
Illiteracy influence the increase of fertility, illiteracy is both a consequence of socioeconomic conditions which lead to higher fertility rate by themselves and aggravating causal factor. Extremely poor women surviving from subsistence farming who are likely to have many children, its more occur in rural areas in developing countries. There is as expected particularly, illiteracy among women for example female literacy rate is better predictor of birth rate and infant rate. Also on other hand poverty and fertility are two important and closely related aspects of warfare, because their relationship started at the household level, due to the low level of education among the women in developing countries especially in rural areas on how to use the family planning hence the high fertility rate. (Kravdal, 2002)
Economic factors influence fertility rate, Fertility rate are close related to economic factors that researchers have faced great difficulties in distinguish exactly how change in one affect the other .for example people with higher income tend to have fewer children than people with lower income. Is this because having more income reduces the desire to have children. Because having a smaller number of children raises income by allowed more time to earn it (John, 2014).
Fertility rate seem to be mainly in area of developing countries are area that experience high level of poverty is proving to be quiet a driving factor for the high fertility rate. In Africa area are experiencing extreme poverty which pushes the population to have more children. Mainly because most of population is dependent on agriculture and primary basked work hence need for a working hand is needed to help support the family in daily work and earn enough for living and survival. for example in Sukuma society they believe that to have many children is prestige and they have a lot of plantation which influence them to produce more children so as to get labours on their plantation.
Value of children approach refers to the function they serve or the needs they fulfill for their parents” (Hoffman, 1973). Obviously, this approach focuses for the value of children for their parents. The concept of value of children approach originates in the rate of a task force needed by Fawcett (1972).
Most parts of the world are currently undergoing dramatic socio-demographic changes. A notable aspect of this demographic transition is the declining fertility in many parts of the world while the birth rate remains high in other parts. Several disciplines are describing this demographic transition, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, and of course demography. More than 30 years ago, economists, demographers, and psychologists first began an interdisciplinary, international research program investigating the "value of children." (Nauck Bernhard)
The "value of children" (VOC) concept is based on the work of Hoffman(1973). Hoffman provided the first and up to now only approach for international and cross-cultural comparisons of variations in fertility decision making by explicitly taking cultural factors into account. (Hoffman, 1973)
He developed an approach comprising objective (economic) and normative factors as well as psychological effects influencing fertility behavior. These aspects were seen as crucial determinants of the births of children. however, value of children is subject to variation because of changes in society and in socio-cultural context and itself influences fertility and parents' behavior towards children.
To establish an inventory of the different aspects of value children represent to their parents, Hoffmann (1973: 46f) categorized inductively empirical results of various sources and came up with the following components:
Adult status and social identity, children in most of families specifically in African societies is taken as an identity and verify the adult hood of a person within society. Example Sukuma society, an individual with child is termed as adult and can be involved in important matter in the society. Therefore this influence high fertility rate and increase of population.
Expansion of the self, ties to a larger entity, most of the African people have the notion of make their tribes to be famous within a society whereby people tend to bear many children as they can in order to make them be famous, hence it leads to the rise and expansion of the population.
Morality, bearing children in most of African societies is taken as important responsibility of an adult; example marriage with no Children is always get complains from the people around them, because people believe that marriage to be complete has to have Children. Therefore that has lead increase of population in most of societies believing so.
Primary group ties, children in most of African societies is taken as link of groups or family. In most cases children has safeguarded couples to divorce. Therefore that has influenced high fertility rate and increase of population.
Stimulation, children are valued because they bring happy in the family. This altitude is prevailed in most of Tanzanian societies, example Sukuma, chaga and fipa society. Therefore this influence high fertility rate and increase of population. According to census 1967-2012 populaton has increased from 5.7% to 22%.
Economic utility, Most of the people within the society tend to look children as an economic potential whereby they tend to take children as source of human power whereby most of the agriculture society depends much on the human labor also they tend to bear many children by believing those children will help them in various economic situation.
Conclusion, we advice the government together with private sectors to cooperate together to ensure that population is controlled in order to improve the wellbeing of the people. Also government should have proper planning to accommodate this trend of population increase