Determinants of Women's Age at First Childbearing in Polonnaruwa District

Abstract

The study mainly focuses on identifying the factors associated with the age of the mother at the first childbirth in Polanaruwa district in Sri Lanka. The primary data were collected through a multistage sampling technique using questionnaires from February to March 2020. The 120 samples of the study consisted of new towns, Aluth Wewa, Jayanthipura, and Kaduruwela areas which cover rural and urban married women who have at least one child belong to the age group 21 to 49 years in the district. The study found that 45.3 percent of married women got their first childbirth aged 25 to 29 years with the mean age at first childbirth to be 27 years, whereas only 6.7 percent of them start their childbearing in age between 35 and 39 years. The frequency of age at marriage reveals that 54.2 percent of them take place early married, nearly 32 percent of them were married between age 25 and 29 years. And only 3.3 percent of them got married between 35 and 39 years, with the mean age at marriage being about 25 years. Independent samples t-test results imply that the mean age of married women differs according to education level, place of residence, religion, and economic status except for the working status of the married women. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to evaluate the impact of socio-economic characteristics on age at first childbearing and its results reveal that age at marriage, educational level, place of residence, religion, and employment status were mostly determined the childbearing in the district