Impact of Higher Education and Income Inequality on Family Size of Staff of Tertiary Institutions in Imo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The family is one of the key tools for promoting socialization, harmony, cultural heritage and procreation in a given society. Maintaining standard and manageable family size with regards to current economic conditions within the society is important. Many scholars have studied several factors that influence the choice of family size in various societies, however, impact of higher education and income inequality on family size of staff of tertiary institutions have been grossly understudied in Imo State. The target populations in this study were teaching and non-teaching staff. A structured questionnaire was administered to a sample size of 384 respondents which returned 300 valid responses. The Ordinal Logistic Regression modeling approach was applied to determine the effect of some important factors on family size of the staff in the institutions using R statistical programming language. The results revealed that alternative income source, staff category (teaching or non-teaching), and their institution were the significant factors at 5% level of significance. Therefore, we recommend that individuals should consider smaller family sizes in Imo State, Nigeria in order to achieve financial stability and cope with the dwindling economy in the place