Determinants of Change in Fertility among Women in Rural Areas of Uganda.

In this study, we focus on determinants of change in fertility among rural women in Uganda using a multivariate Poisson decomposition technique to quantify the contribution of changes in the socioeconomic and demographic composition of women which we also refer to as the characteristic effects and changes in their fertility behavior (the coefficients' effects or risk of childbearing) to the overall reduction in fertility among women in rural areas during the 2006-2016 period. The "characteristics effects" are used to mean the effect of changing composition of women by the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics between 2006 and 2016. On the other hand, fertility behavior also presented as coefficients' effects mean changes in the risk or likelihood of giving birth to children by the rural women between the two survey years. Our findings indicate that the mean number of children ever born (MCEB) reduced from 4.5 to 3.9 in 2006 and this reduction was associated with both the changes in composition of women and fertility behavior. The composition of women contributed to 42% while the fertility behavior contributed to 58% of the observed reduction. The education level attained and the age at first sex showed significant contributions on both components of the decomposition. The observed decline in fertility is largely associated with the variation in the risk of childbearing among the rural women. The variation in the risk of childbearing by education and age at first sex o...
Source: Journal of Pregnancy - Category: OBGYN Tags: J Pregnancy Source Type: research