Chowdhury Shanjida, Haque Md Aminul
Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka, 1000, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Southeast Business School, Southeast University, Dhaka, 1208, Bangladesh.
BMC Womens Health. 2025 Jul 4;25(1):320. doi: 10.1186/s12905-025-03624-3.
Women's empowerment (WE) has become a central focus for development at a national and global level. There is a need for a comprehensive and updated assessment of the existing evidence on WE and the total number of children ever born (CEB). This paper addresses the association between different dimensions of WE and the total number of CEB among women aged 15-49 years in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
This is a cross-sectional study. Using primary data, two binary and skewed regression models were applied to find the best-fitting model to investigate the association between different dimensions of women's empowerment and the total number of CEB.
Based on the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) principles, the best-fit model was the binary logistic regression compared to other models. The study revealed that higher levels of women empowerment were associated with fewer CEB. Among the four dimensions-economic, psychological, household, and socio-cultural indices- psychological dimensions significantly influenced the number of CEB. Results also showed that age at first marriage, educational attainment of respondents, occupational level, wealth index, and use of contraceptives were found to be negatively associated with the number of CEB.
The study found that an increase in WE was linked to a reduction in CEB. Other predictors for CEB were age at first marriage, women's educational attainment, working status, wealth index, and contraceptive use, which were all identified as factors associated with a lower number of children. Policymakers should focus on the dimension-specific and overall level of WE in reducing CEB.
妇女赋权已成为国家和全球发展的核心关注点。有必要对关于妇女赋权和终身生育子女总数（CEB）的现有证据进行全面且更新的评估。本文探讨了孟加拉国达卡15至49岁女性中妇女赋权的不同维度与CEB总数之间的关联。
这是一项横断面研究。利用原始数据，应用了两个二元和偏态回归模型来找到最佳拟合模型，以研究妇女赋权的不同维度与CEB总数之间的关联。
基于赤池信息准则（AIC）和贝叶斯信息准则（BIC）原则，与其他模型相比，最佳拟合模型是二元逻辑回归。研究表明，妇女赋权水平越高，CEB数量越少。在经济、心理、家庭和社会文化指数这四个维度中，心理维度对CEB数量有显著影响。结果还显示，初婚年龄、受访者的教育程度、职业水平、财富指数和避孕药具的使用与CEB数量呈负相关。
该研究发现妇女赋权的增加与CEB数量的减少有关。CEB的其他预测因素包括初婚年龄、妇女的教育程度、工作状况、财富指数和避孕药具的使用，这些都被确定为与子女数量较少相关的因素。政策制定者应关注妇女赋权在特定维度和整体层面上对减少CEB的作用。
