Determinants of adolescent fertility in Ethiopia

Background: Worldwide, adolescents suffer from a disproportionate share of reproductive health problem. Throughout the world, over 14 million adolescents aged 15-19 years give birth annually. The purpose of this study was to assess the level and identify proximate and other determinants of adolescent fertility in Ethiopia.Methods: Raw data collected from all part of the country using stratified cluster sampling method by the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey 2005 (EDHS-2005) was used. After the data for adolescents aged from 15 to 19 years were extracted from the large data set, Multivariate logistic regression model was applied to identify sociodemographic and economic determinants whereas Bongaarts model was used to determine proximate determinants fertility.Results: Of the 3,266 adolescent women, 443 (13.6%) had given birth at least once prior to the survey and 133 (4.1%) were pregnant. Of the 443 adolescents who had at least given birth, the majority (72.7%) had one child while about a quarter (23.2%) had 2 live births and the rest 1.0% gave four live births with a mean number of child ever born of 1.33±0.6. The major factors associated with adolescent fertility were age, educational status, place of residence, employment, marriage, contraceptive use and postpartum infecundability. The odds for increased adolescent fertility was significantly higher in early adolescents (AOR=7.6; 95% CI=6.0 to 9.9), had lower education (AOR=6.7; 95%CI=4.1 to10.9), among rural teens (AOR=3.6; 95%CI=1.9 to 6.9) and currently not working (AOR=1.7; 95%CI= 1.3 to 2.2) than their counterparts. The observed fertility rate of 0.52 children per woman obtained from Bongaarts model of fertility indicated about 1.98 births per woman were averted due to non-marriage, delayed marriage, contraceptive use and postpartum infecundability.Conclusion: Since adolescent fertility is felt to be a problem, concerted efforts are needed to empower adolescents to fight early marriage, promote education and encourage the utilization of family planning targeting the rural teenagers. Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2010;24(1):30-38