Investigating the effect of behavioral and demographic characteristics of Iranian women on the number of children ever born

The number of children ever born (CEB) to a woman, as an index of her fertility behavior, are interesting for the governments and demographer policymakers. In recent years, a notable reduction of fertility and population aging in Iran has caused concern among politicians, and it has led to starting new changes in demographic policies. Therefore, to adopting new demographic and health policies programs, identification of factors that affecting CEB is essential.

To evaluate determinant factors on CEB, information of 20093 married Iranian women aged between 15 and 54 years has been analyzed from the Iranian National Institute of Health Research survey. Based on the structure of data and the possible influential unobserved population heterogeneity on CEB in each city and province, a multilevel count regression model was applied. The analysis was performed using the ‘R’ software (version 3.5) with a significant level of 0.05.

Findings show that the mean and median number of CEB was 2.82 and 2.00 for all women, respectively. Meanwhile, these values were 4.56 and 4.00 for the women who reached menopause. There was a significant unobserved heterogeneity affecting CEB in each province (σp=0.018). Also, the results of the multilevel model show that living in an urban area (RR=0.90), higher age at first marriage (RR=0.96), higher education (RR=0.84, RR=0.81), and exposure to mass media (RR=0.87) decrease the risk ratio of the number of CEB (p <0.001).

It seems that the tendency of women to academic education and their access to mass media has a significant effect on reducing childbearing. Therefore, in future planning, attention to these two factors can be useful and helpful to move to increase fertility.