Determinants of Successive Birth Interval Among Reproductive Age Women in Ethiopia; Application of Poisson Regression Model

The period of time between two subsequent live births is known as the birth interval. The goal of this study is to use a Poisson Regression Model to discover related risk variables of the spacing between births among Ethiopian women of reproductive age. The Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS, 2016) databases were used to gather the data. Descriptive & Poisson Regression Model analysis were performed. Data were analyzed using SPSS V-26 and STATA V-14. Successive birth interval was used as dependent variable. Level of significance was 0.05 From a total of 9147 reproductive age mother, 5459(59.7% ) of them has understanding of ovulatory cycle and 3688(40.3 %) have not understanding of ovulatory cycle. 1682(18.4 %) of them have been lived in urban area and the remaining 7465(81.6%) of mothers’ have been lived in rural area. The average birth intervals of mothers’ in month’s were 36.77 months. Based on the result of the Model; location of residence, father’s educational level, occupational status of mother and father, religion of mother, household wealth index, marital status of the mother, contraception use before the last pregnancy, age of the mother at first birth, understanding of the ovulation cycle, birth type of mother, and access to mass media were significantly associated with number of successive birth intervals. Stakeholders and decision-makers in law enforcement need to consider factors that affect the number of successive birth intervals in a month during planning and developing policies to promote adequate successive birth intervals. Specific programs should be designed to deliberately target young women with family planning services and awareness of the use of contraceptives.