Bangladesh 1993-1994 Demographic and Health ... - Measure DHS

CHAPTER 5OTHER PROXIMATE DETERMINANTS OF FERTILITY5.1 IntroductionThis chapter addresses the principal factors other than contraception that affect a woman's risk ofbecoming pregnant: nuptiality, sexual intercourse, postpartum amenorrhea and abstinence from sexualrelations, and termination of exposure to pregnancy. Marriage is a primary indicator of exposure of womento the risk of pregnancy, and is, therefore, important for understanding fertility pattems. Populations in whichage at marriage is low also tend to experience early childbearing and high fertility; hence, trends in age atmarriage can help to explain trends in fertility levels.This chapter also includes a more direct measure of the level of exposure to pregnancy: the frequencyof intercourse. Measures of other proximate determinants of fertility are the duration of postpartumamenorrhea and postpartum abstinence, which can delay exposure to the risk of pregnancy during the earlymonths after a birth. The chapter concludes with an examination of two indicators of decreasing exposureto the risk of pregnancy with age: menopause and long-term sexual abstinence.In the BDHS, only women who had ever been married were interviewed with the individualquestionnaire. However, a number of the tables presented in this chapter are based on all women, i.e., bothever-married and never-married women. In constructing these tables, the number of ever-married womeninterviewed in the survey is multiplied by an inflation factor that is equal to the ratio of all women to evermarriedwomen as reported in the household questionnaire. This procedure expands the denominators in thetables so that they represent all women. The inflation factors are calculated by single years of age and, wherethe results are presented by background characteristics, single-year inflation factors are calculated separatelyfor each category of the characteristic.It is important to take note of the definition of marriage that was used in the BDHS. In Bangladesh,it is common for a woman to wait several months or even years after formal marriage before going to livewith her husband. Since the researchers who designed the BDHS were interested in marriage mainly as itaffects exposure to the risk of pregnancy, interviewers were instructed to ask the questions about marriage,not in the sense of formal marriage, but as cohabitation.5.2 Current Marital StatusData on the marital status of respondents at the time of the survey are shown in Table 5.1. Overall,32 percent of women age 10-49 have never married, 63 percent are currently married, and 5 percent are eitherwidowed, divorced or no longer living with a panner. The proportion who have never married falls sharplyfrom 95 percent of women age 10-14 to less than 1 percent of women over age 30. The universality ofmarriage is evident from the fact that, among women age 30 and over, 99 percent are, or have been, married.As expected, the proportion widowed increases with age of women; one in ten women age 40-44 andone in six women 45-49 is widowed. The proportion divorced is more even across age groups.71