Fertility behaviour in Uganda: Does partner age difference matter?
Reproductive Health
30
Issue: 2
(11 - 2016)
High fertility in developing countries often strains socio-economic resources and impedes the
achievements of national policies and individual goals. In this study, we investigated the effect of partner
age difference on fertility in Uganda, a high fertility country in Sub-Sahara Africa. Data was drawn from
the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. Poisson regression model was used to isolate the
effect partner age difference on fertility. Our findings from both unadjusted and adjusted regression
models suggested that partner age difference had no effect on fertility in Uganda. However, the
observed direction of flow was that; women with younger partners had slightly lower fertility (IRR:0.97
C1:0.8446-1.1159) while those with older partners by |-5years had slightly higher fertility (IRR:1.05
C1:0.9532-|.1652) relative to women whose age was not different from their partners’.
Keywords: age difference, fertility, Uganda, partners, DHS.
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