Age at First Marriage and Fertility Decline in Dabat Health and Demographic Surveillance System Site, Northwest Ethiopia: Decomposition Analysis

Individual and community-level determinants of knowledge about fertile periods among adolescent girls and young women (10-24 years) in Sub-Saharan Africa: A multilevel mixed effect analysis of a recent demographic and health survey

Background

Identifying fertility periods accurately will protect teenage girls and young women from unintended pregnancies and related complications. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, knowledge of the fertile period among adolescent girls and young women is not well studied. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess adolescents' and young women's knowledge regarding fertility periods and its determinants in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Methods

The most recent demographic and health surveys' data were used. The study had 140,064 participants in all. The data was analyzed using STATA/SE version 14. Using a multilevel logistic regression model, factors associated with knowledge of fertile periods have been determined. P-values <0.05 showed the significance of the factors associated with the outcome variable. The data were interpreted using the adjusted odds ratio and confidence interval. The best-fit model was determined to be the one with the highest logliklihood ratio and the lowest deviance.

Results

One in five (20%) women between the ages of 10 and 24 had accurate knowledge about the fertile period. Age (AOR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.40, 1.49), educational level (AOR = 1.68, 95% CI: 1.60, 1.77), knowledge of family planning (AOR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.27, 1.39), distance (AOR = 2.31, 95% CI: 2.02, 2.98), residence (AOR = 1.06, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.10), and low community poverty (AOR = 3.06, 95% CI: 3.01, 3.12) had higher odds of knowledge about fertile period.

Conclusion

This research finds that adolescents and young women in sub-Saharan Africa have low knowledge of the reproductive period. It was discovered that factors at the individual and communal levels influence women's knowledge of the fertile period. While developing policies and strategies, the health ministries of Sub-Saharan African countries had to take into consideration input from women whose experiences indicated that obtaining reproductive health services was hindered by distance.

Analyzing factors associated with time to age at first marriage among women in Ethiopia: log logistic-gamma shared frailty model

OBJECTIVE

The main objective of this study is to fit Log logistic-Gamma shared frailty model for the determinant of time to age at first marriage among women in Ethiopia.

METHODS

The data set in this study were obtained from Demography and Health survey conducted in Ethiopia in 2016. In this study, we used Log logistic-Gamma shared frailty model to account for the loss of independence that arises from the clustering of women in region of Ethiopia. A total of 12,066 women aged 15-49 in Ethiopia were included in this study.

RESULTS

Of all 12,066 women aged 15-49, 9466 (78.45%) were married and the median & mean age at first marriage for women living in Ethiopia were 17.2 years and 17.5 years respectively, while the minimum and maximum age at first marriage observed were 8 years and 49 years respectively.

CONCLUSION

The most significant contributing factors to delaying time to age at first marriage of women aged 15-49 in Ethiopia were increased education level of women, increased education level of the head, increased income, residing in urban and being followers of religion other than orthodox, catholic, protestant & Muslim. The heterogeneity of age at first marriage for women aged 15-49 among regions in Ethiopia was observed. The government of Ethiopia and the concerned bodies should revise the women's health policy and practice to reduce early marriage and give attention to women; illiterate, live in rural areas, and have illiterate and poor heads.