Department of Mathematical Sciences, School of Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi.
BMC Public Health. 2024 Aug 22;24(1):2285. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-19816-9.
Recent research has established existence of a correlation between women's education and fertility, suggesting that they share similar risk factors. However, in many studies, the two variables were analysed separately, which could bias the conclusions by undermining the apparent correlations of such paired outcomes. In this article, the univariate and bivariate Poisson regression models were applied to nationally representative sample of 24,562 women from the 2015-16 Malawi demographic and health survey to examine the risk factors of women's education levels and fertility. The R software version 4.1.2 was used for the analyses. The results showed that estimates from the bivariate Poisson model were consistent with those obtained from the separate univariate Poisson models. The sizes of estimates of coefficients, their standard errors, p-values, and directions were comparable in both bivariate and univariate Poisson models. Using either the univariate or bivariate Poisson model, it was found that the age of a woman at first sexual experience, her current age, household wealth index, and contraceptive usage were significantly associated with both the woman's schooling and fertility. The study further revealed that ethnicity, religion, and region of residence impacted education level only and not fertility. Similarly, marital status and occupation impacted fertility only and not education. The study also found that higher education levels were linked to a lower number of children, with a strong negative correlation of -0.62 between the two variables. The study recommends using bivariate Poisson regression for analysing paired count response data, when there is an apparent covariance between the outcome variables. The results suggest that efforts by policymakers to achieve the desired women's sexual and reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa should be intertwined with improving women's and girls' education attainment in the region.
最近的研究已经确定了妇女教育程度和生育率之间存在相关性，这表明它们具有相似的风险因素。然而，在许多研究中，这两个变量是分开分析的，这可能会通过破坏这种配对结果的明显相关性来歪曲结论。在本文中，应用单变量和双变量泊松回归模型对来自 2015-16 年马拉维人口和健康调查的 24562 名妇女的全国代表性样本进行了分析，以研究妇女教育程度和生育率的风险因素。分析使用了 R 软件版本 4.1.2。结果表明，双变量泊松模型的估计结果与单独的单变量泊松模型的估计结果一致。系数的估计值、标准误差、p 值和方向在双变量和单变量泊松模型中都具有可比性。使用单变量或双变量泊松模型，都发现妇女首次性行为的年龄、当前年龄、家庭财富指数和避孕措施的使用与妇女的受教育程度和生育率都显著相关。研究还进一步表明，种族、宗教和居住地对教育程度有影响，但对生育率没有影响。同样，婚姻状况和职业对生育率有影响，但对教育程度没有影响。研究还发现，较高的教育程度与较少的子女数量有关，这两个变量之间存在强烈的负相关关系-0.62。该研究建议在分析配对计数响应数据时使用双变量泊松回归，当结果变量之间存在明显的协方差时。研究结果表明，政策制定者在撒哈拉以南非洲实现妇女期望的性健康和生殖健康的努力应该与提高该地区妇女和女孩的教育程度交织在一起。
