Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis on Predictors of Women’s Intention to Limit Child-bearing in Rural Ethiopia

The fertility rate of Ethiopia, especially in the rural areas, is unacceptably high. This is leading to negative influence on economic and social development. Thus, understanding those factors that influence the fertility intention of women is important for family planning program purposes and population policy. The main objective of this study was to investigate variability of women’s intentions to limit child-bearing in rural Ethiopia between regions and individually. The source of the data was the 2011 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey. A weighted sub-sample of 10,864 women was drawn from the DHS women's dataset. The multilevel logistic regression was applied to examine the various factors between intention to limit child-bearing and demographic, socio-economic, and cultural characteristics. From a total of 10,864 women 3,230 (29.7 percent) were intending to limit child-bearing while the remaining 7,634 (70.3 percent) did not. The multilevel logistic regression analysis showed that there were substantial variations in desire to limit child-bearing among eight regions in rural Ethiopia. Accordingly, for empty model, the variance is estimated asδ 2 uo = 0.521 revealing that there was a significant difference in intention to limit child-bearing across regions. The variance of random intercept is estimated at 0.423; this is due to the inclusion of fixed predictor variables indicating that the additional predictors did not increase the percentage of variance explained by the model. Furthermore, either empty model or random intercept model revealed that there was a significance variation in intention to limit child-bearing across the considered regions. Similarly, results of random coefficient for the selected few predictor variables, showed that the number of living children found to be significant in explaining variations in intention to limit child-bearing across the regions. The overall variance constant term is found to be statistically significant. Family planning programs should focus on women with unmet need, particularly those who want to limit child-bearing; avail more information, education and communication about small family norms and the benefits of family planning to achieve the goals of wanted fertility is needed.