Abstract:
Background: Fertility is one of the elements in population dynamics that has significant
contribution towards changing population size and structure over time in the world. This
study investigates determinant factors of fertility among women in Ethiopia.
Methodology: The data used for the analysis was obtained from the 2016 Ethiopia
Demographic and Health Survey which was implemented by the Central Statistical
Agency. The survey collected a total of 15,683 successfully interviewed women aged from
15-49 years out of this 9,602 women were considered in this study. Multilevel Negative
binomial analysis was selected to investigate the effect of socioeconomic, demographic,
environmental and health related factors on the number of children ever born per woman
in Ethiopia.
Results: Likelihood ratio test suggested that, the number of ever born children varies
across regions and multilevel count regression model was better fit than the single level
count regression model. The expected number of total children ever born for using
Contraceptive use were lower than 0.9557 times as compared non-using Contraceptive
mothers. The expected number of ever born child of farther who has job attachment is
higher than 1.05 times that of father who has job attachment.
Conclusion: based on the result we can conclude that wealth index, year of education
and age of mother at first sex, contraceptive use are negatively associated with total
number of ever born children. However, family size, age of mother, age of mother at first
birth, number of living child’s, father’s occupation, region, ideal number of children and
number of visits are positively associated with a total number of ever born children were
as significant factors. Therefore, the government and other stakeholders should pay
attention to the subject and develop intervention to improve on the significant factors
identified on the current paper.