| dc.description.abstract | Rural areas in Uganda have been noted to contribute highest to the fertility rate in Uganda. The country’s TFR has remained persistently high, above 6, particularly among rural women whose rate often exceeds 7 children per woman; therefore the main objective of the study was to examine the factors affecting fertility among women in the rural areas of Uganda. The factors included age, contraceptive use, desired number of children, religion, wealth index, employment status, education levels and marital status.
This study analyzed the 2016 UDHS dataset using descriptive statistics mainly Pearson’s chi-squared tests to ascertain the association between the independent variables and fertility levels at 95% CI (p-value < 0.05) and Poisson regression model where interpretation was based on the incidence rate ratio (IRR), and statistical significance was fixed at 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results show that fertility levels significantly varied with ages; 20-24 (IRR= 3.0, CI= 2.82-3.23), 25-29 (IRR= 5.3, CI= 4.94-5.73), 30-34 (IRR= 7.6, CI= 7.03-8.13), 35-39 (IRR= 9.6, CI= 8.92-10.36), 40-44 (IRR= 10.5, CI= 9.71-11.33), 45-49 (IRR= 11.4, CI= 10.63-12.31), contraceptive use with those who were not using with IRR= 1.1 (CI= 1.07-1.11), education levels; primary (IRR= 0.95, CI= 0.93-0.98), secondary (IRR=0.8, CI= 0.75-0.81), higher education (IRR= 0.6, CI= 0.51-0.61), marital status; cohabiting (IRR= 1.2, CI= 1.19-1.26), in union (IRR= 1.3, CI= 1.24-1.31) and wealth index; second (IRR= 0.97, CI= 0.94-0.99), middle (IRR= 0.95, CI= 0.92-0.97), fourth (IRR= 0.9, CI= 0.88-0.94) and highest (IRR= 0.85, CI= 0.81-0.89), all with a p-value < 0.05. Only women who desired 1-4 children were significantly associated with fertility levels of women in rural areas with IRR = 0.7(CI= 0.58-0.86), 0.7(CI= 0.65-0.84), 0.8(CI= 0.66-0.87), 0.9(CI= 0.79-0.99) respectively. Similarly, only respondents who were employed in clerical work (IRR= 0.8, CI= 0.67-0.95) had a significant association with the fertility levels of the women living in rural areas. Religion on the other hand had Anglicans (IRR= 1.2, CI= 1.01-1.54), Muslims (IRR= 1.3, CI= 1.07-1.63) and other religions (IRR= 1.3, CI= 1.04-1.58) significantly associated with fertility levels of women living in rural areas (p-value < 0.05).
The study recommends interventions to address the amount of time a woman is expected to spend on their children especially while employed as well as interventions that invest more in the ease in accessibility of contraceptives, awareness creation, and empowerment of women through employment and education | en_US |
