Estimation of marital fertility control in Zambia : an application of the COALE-Trussell fertility model.

Abstract

Zambia has continued to record high fertility and population growth rates despite various studies on determinants of fertility and increased Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) of 49% reported in the 2013/14 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey report. However, there is lack of information on fertility regulation within marriages. Hence this study. Methodology: Data used in this study was from all Zambia Demographic and Health Surveys (1992-2013/14). The analysis was based on married women aged 20-44. Out of all women interviewed, 3,947; 4,481; 4,372; 4,038 and 9,108 married women were valid for analysis in the year 1992, 1996, 2007, 2001/02 and 2013/14 respectively. The Coale-Trussell fertility model involved the use of Simple linear regression analysis to estimate the marital fertility control index in Zambia. Microsoft excel was used to compute Age Specific Marital Fertility (ASMF) and to analyse the predictors of marital births, simple linear regression was used in SPSS. Over 70% of the married women married before the age of 20 and less than 10% married women use long acting &permanent contraceptives. Majority of the women attained primary education and the least higher education. The Coale-Trussell fertility model revealed that the marital fertility control index, m, has increased by a six fold from 0.031 in 1992 to 0.195 in 2014. This implies that the level of voluntary fertility control within marriage has sluggishly increased over the years. However, the Zambian marital fertility control index remains lower than 0.5 depicting little deliberate fertility regulation within marriages. Use of Long Acting & Permanent contraceptives and woman’s level of education are the strongest predictors of marital fertility. There is little deliberate fertility regulation within marriages in Zambia despite an increased CPR and a steady decline over the past six years in the desired number of children among Zambian women, from 5.2 children in 2007 to 4.5 children in 2013-14. Findings show that married women with a higher education, living in urban areas and those using long acting & permanent contraceptives are significantly more likely to regulate fertility within marriages. There is an urgent call for more family planning programmes aimed at enhanced usage of the long acting and permanent contraceptives especially in the rural areas of Zambia.