Browsing by Author "Nega Wondiber"

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    The Statistical Distribution and Some Determinants of Birth Interval for Rural Ethiopia
    (Addis Abeba university, 2011-05) Nega Wondiber; Wencheko Eshetu (Professer)
    Studying the dynamics of spacing of births is important for several reasons including an understanding of completed family size. In this paper the length of birth interval between successive children that is called inter-birth interval in rural community of Ethiopia was considered. The birth-interval approach used to study the tempo of fertility as measured by the transition time for those women who continue reproduction. The data for the study was obtained from Ethiopian Demography and Health Survey data conducted in 2005. The data contains 9647 rural women aged from 15-49 years. The approach of the study was fitting probability density functions to identify from among the three gamma, lognormal and normal distributions that provide adequate fit. Identifying variables that affect birth intervals was done by parametric survival analysis technique called “accelerated failure time” model. The result shows that the duration time between successive births is different for different regions, religion groups and education level. Comparatively mothers from the northern region have longer birth interval, while mothers from eastern region have the shortest; and the birth interval for those mothers from central and south regions lie between. The length of birth is short in illiterate mothers than other groups. Muslim mothers have shorter birth interval than followers of “other” religions. Intervals following the death of the previous child (or children) tend to be significantly shorter than intervals where the child survived. The median length of birth intervals in rural community of Ethiopia is 28 months and more than 75% of births occur within 3 years