Fertility Preferences and Level of Family Planning in Rwanda : Case of Huye District

The eradication of poverty and hunger is the first of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established by the United ations. One of the Rwanda’s commitments is the fulfillment of this goal as indicated in its own long term Vision 2020 aimed at enabling Rwandans to emerge from under-development and poverty status by achieving economic growth objectives in combination with social indicators objectives. As it has been researched that the major cause of poverty in developing countries is the high rate of their population growth, this paper is aimed at assessing the fertility preferences and the level of family planning in Rwanda as a tool to poverty eradication. The paper also presents some challenges and some other pathways to improve the socioeconomic welfare of Rwandan population. In this paper descriptive methods have been used to present and analyze data and a Pearson Chi square test has been used to study the association between variables. The results shows that the knowledge of contraception is universal (99%) but the use of contraception methods for family planning is still very low (37%). On the average fertility preferences are 3.2 children which are good if realized. The general conclusion that emerges from the study is that in order to reduce poverty, family planning is a must but lot more are to be done. Among other things, a focus on increasing rural income and agriculture output.