Abstract
Child's gender preference (GP) frequently leads to high fertility which has adverse effect on family health. The link between women's fertility intention, GP and Living Children's Sex Composition (LCSC) as found in this study is less explored in Malawi. We examined the relationship between GP, LCSC and fertility intention. This study utilized 2010 MDHS dataset and focused on married women aged 15-49 years (n=1739) in stable unions who currently have at least 5 living children. Data was analyzed at bivariate and multivariate levels (α=0.05). About 39.7% of the women have GP and higher proportion (23.3%) has preference for females. Age, region, wealth-quintile, religion, residence and family planning programmes were significantly associated with fertility intention. Women who have GP and same LCSC were 1.35 and 2.4 times significantly more likely to have intention to bear more children than those who have no GP and different sexes composition respectively. These odd ratios changed to 1.38 for GP and 2.44 for LCSC after adjusting for other socio-demographic variables. We find that GP and LCSC significantly influence women's intention to bear more children. Women should stop childbearing after attaining their desired number irrespective of the LCSC.
Highlights
Malawi is a country of about 16.3 million people and the population growth rate is 2.8 percent.[1]
Our study focused on high fertility women in stable union who either have intention to limit or postpone childbearing and included women who do not want
Considering the health and socioeconomic implication of high fertility, the prevalence of fertility intention among women who already have more than four living children can be considered as high. One may find it difficult to disentangle factors surrounding such intention among the women, but our study clearly revealed that gender preference and sex composition of the living children are important factors to reckon with
Summary
Malawi is a country of about 16.3 million people and the population growth rate is 2.8 percent.[1] Studies have shown tremendous improvement in the demographic indices of the country over the years.[2,3] The infant and childhood mortality have reduced and there has been an improvement in contraceptive knowl- Despite all these great demographic success, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) only slightly reduced from 6.7 in 1992 to 5.7 in 2010 and Malawi is still recognized as one of the high fertility countries today.[1] The slow pace of reduction in TFR has been a source of concern to fertility researchers and family planning programmers within and outside the country.
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