The Statistical Distribution And Some Determinants Of Birth Interval For Rural Ethiopia

Studying the dynamics of spacing of births is important for several reasonsrnincluding an understanding of completed family size. In this paper the length ofrnbirth interval between successive children that is called inter-birth interval in ruralrncommunity of Ethiopia was considered. The birth-interval approach used to studyrnthe tempo of fertility as measured by the transition time for those women whorncontinue reproduction. The data for the study was obtained from EthiopianrnDemography and Health Survey data conducted in 2005. The data contains 9647rnrural women aged from 15-49 years.rnThe approach of the study was fitting probability density functions to identifyrnfrom among the three gamma, lognormal and normal distributions that providernadequate fit. Identifying variables that affect birth intervals was done by parametricrnsurvival analysis technique called “accelerated failure time” model.rnThe result shows that the duration time between successive births is differentrnfor different regions, religion groups and education level. Comparatively mothersrnfrom the northern region have longer birth interval, while mothers from easternrnregion have the shortest; and the birth interval for those mothers from central andrnsouth regions lie between. The length of birth is short in illiterate mothers than otherrngroups. Muslim mothers have shorter birth interval than followers of “other”rnreligions. Intervals following the death of the previous child (or children) tend to bernsignificantly shorter than intervals where the child survived. The median length ofrnbirth intervals in rural community of Ethiopia is 28 months and more than 75% ofrnbirths occur within 3 years

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism