Factors Affecting Fertility of Currently Married Women in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, With Special Emphasis on Migration Status
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The fertility levels of the two cities (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) are among the lowest
in the country. However the low fertility rates are not the result of a decline in the
number of births rather it is due to the presence of large number of women out of marital
union. As a result the marital fertility rates are much higher than the fertility levels of the
total women. This paper, therefore, uses the data from the 2005 Demographic and Health
Survey of Ethiopia to identify the factors that affect the marital fertility of women in the
two major cities of the country. Since the two cities have large number of migrants, the
study gives special emphasis to the effect of migration status on fertility. The women
whose previous place of residence is out of the two cities are classified as migrants
whereas those who never changed their residence since birth are treated as nonmigrants.
Women who are married and are in marital union at the time of the survey are
the unit of analysis. A total of 757 women of which 515 are migrants and the remaining
242 are natives are included in the analysis. The study applies descriptive, bivariate and
multivariate statistical methods. In the bivariate analysis one-way ANOVA is applied to
test the presence of significant differences in mean CES among the sub-groups of
independent variables. The ANOVA tests indicate that the difference in fertility among
the sub-groups of religion, ethnicity, education, number of times married, age at .first
marriage and variables related to migration status are significant. On the other hand the
contraceptive use, work status and place of residence are not found to be responsible for
the fertility variation of the target population. The multivariate finding of the study
illustrates that age at first marriage is the strongest factor in causing fertility variation
among the sampled women. Education, contraceptive use, religion and ethnicity are
other important factors that affect fertility of the respondents. The multivariate result also
shows that fertility of the target population does not differ by region and migration
related variables.
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Currently Married, 1 Women