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Fertility among Northern Nigeria women and associated factors: Negative binomial regression model approach


Oritogun KS
Oyewole OO
Daniel OJ

Abstract

Objective:  The 2020 sustainable development progress report shows that human population growth is a critical barrier to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There are very few studies on determinants of fertility particularly looking at the northern part of Nigeria that has a relatively high fertility level compared with the southern part of the country. This study therefore is aimed at identifying the factors associated with fertility among women in northern Nigeria.


Methods: The data for this study was from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2018. The number of children ever born by women aged 15 – 49 years and other variables who lived in Northern Nigeria were extracted and analyzed using Negative Binomial Regression, where the level of significance was 0.05. 


Results: There were variations in factors associated with fertility among the geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Age of the respondents, sex of household head, wealth index, religion, ethnicity, use of family planning (FP) method, and child death experience were among the factors associated with fertility. Women with no/lower education, early marriage, being Muslim and Hausa/Fulani ethnic background experienced high fertility (p<0.05).


Conclusion: Attention to the factors mentioned above and intervention programmes designed to reduce fertility are indispensable. Education of female children should be given extra attention as this will empower them to be more informed. Hence, achieving SDGs will become a reality.


Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 2756-4657
print ISSN: 2465-6666