Factors Influencing Sri Lankan Family Size: With Special Reference to Colombo District

Abstract

Family is the most basic unit of human society which is a collection of people bound together by relations. The fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman can have during her child-bearing period. According to United Nations World Population Prospects statistics, the Sri Lankan fertility rate was 2.177, and the fertility growth rate was -0.77 percent in 2020. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to examine factors that affect Sri Lankan family size. Using the multi-stage cluster sampling method, 350 families were selected for the survey of which 272 from those residing in the Colombo district were gathered via structured questionnaires and telephone conversation. The gathered data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) soft-ware along with the Binary Logistic Regression model to achieve the main objective. A woman's age of marriage, inclinations to use contraceptive methods, and the increase in natural abortions were identified as the main factors determining the number of children in a Sri Lankan family. The number of children in the household decreases as a woman's age of marriage is postponed. Similarly, women who use contraceptive methods have fewer children than those who don’t. The serious problem of increasing natural abortions also influences the number of children in a household on the fact that the number of children of a woman who faced at least one abortion shows a significant decrease compared to women who hadn't faced any at all.