Department of Social Statistics and Demography and Centre for Global Health, Population, Poverty and Policy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Reprod Health. 2019 Jun 7;16(1):79. doi: 10.1186/s12978-019-0733-6.
Fertility rates remain persistently high in Nigeria, with little difference across socioeconomic groups. While the desire for large family size is culturally rooted, there is little understanding of how repeated child mortality experiences influence fertility behaviour and parity transition in Nigeria.
Using birth history data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), we applied life table techniques and proportional-hazard regression model to explore the effect of child survival experience on parity transitions. We hypothesize that a woman with one or more child death experience is at elevated risk of progressing towards higher parities.
Our findings show that child mortality is concentrated among mothers living in deprived conditions especially in rural areas of the northern part of Nigeria and among those with little or no education and, among those belonging to Hausa/Fulani ethnicity and Islam religion. Mothers with repeated experience of child deaths were significantly at a higher rate of progressing to higher parities than their counterparts (HR: 1.45; 95% CI: 1.31-1.61), when adjusted for relevant biological and socio-demographic characteristics.
Recurrent experience of child deaths exacerbates the risks to higher parity transition. Interventions aimed at reducing fertility in Nigeria should target promoting child survival and family planning concurrently.
尼日利亚的生育率持续居高不下，社会经济群体之间几乎没有差异。虽然人们渴望拥有大家庭，但对于反复的儿童死亡经历如何影响尼日利亚的生育行为和生育胎次转变，人们的了解甚少。
我们使用了 2013 年尼日利亚人口与健康调查（NDHS）的生育史数据，应用生命表技术和比例风险回归模型来探讨儿童生存经历对生育胎次转变的影响。我们假设，有一个或多个孩子死亡经历的妇女，生育更高胎次的风险增加。
我们的研究结果表明，儿童死亡率集中在生活条件较差的母亲中，尤其是在尼日利亚北部农村地区的母亲中，以及那些受教育程度较低或没有受教育的母亲中，属于豪萨/富拉尼族和伊斯兰教的母亲中。与对照组相比，多次经历儿童死亡的母亲生育更高胎次的比例显著更高（HR：1.45；95%CI：1.31-1.61），在调整了相关的生物学和社会人口学特征后。
反复经历儿童死亡会加剧生育更高胎次的风险。旨在降低尼日利亚生育率的干预措施应同时针对促进儿童生存和计划生育。
