Factors Determining Birth Intervals: A Multilevel Mixed Effect Parametric Survival Approach

Abstract

Interval between births plays an important role in maternal health as well as child health. This study applies the methodology of Flexible parametric survival models to data on successive births among Nigeria women using the dataset from 2018 National Demographic Health survey. The flexible parametric survival model with Weibull baseline distribution was found to be the best among other fitted baseline distributions. The factors, zone of residence, educational qualification, religion, economic status and age at first birth were found to be significant in predicting the birth intervals. It was found that random effect parameter indicates that the interval between successive births is similar from the same woman.

Keywords: Birth intervals, Baseline hazard, Mixed effect, Flexible parametric model, AIC.