Premarital fertility, defined as birth before first marriage, is investigated in Madagascar, using two Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in 1992 and 1997. About 8 per cent of all births and 23 per cent of first births take place before marriage, despite a low underlying mean age at first marriage, estimated to be 18.6 years in the absence of a previous birth. A premarital first bir...

BACKGROUND Like many developing countries, Mali has few sources of mortality data. High quality mortality estimates are available from household surveys, such as the demographic and health surveys (DHS), approximately every five years, making it difficult to track progress in reducing mortality. The Rapid Mortality Monitoring (RMM) project in Mali aimed to address this issue by testing a commun...

Surveys conducted in the context of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) programme are an important source of data on health of families in developing countries. Both at the national and international level, DHS surveys provide much-needed data on fertility and family planning, on mortality and nutrition, and on health services utilization. The use of uniform survey instruments allows detai...

Turkey has been experiencing significant fertility decline since the 1950s. Increasing mean ages at childbearing have accompanied this decline, thus studies regarding tempo effects are necessary for Turkey. The main aim of this study is to reveal the tempo distortions in recent period fertility in Turkey as a whole and for different sub-groups by using an adjustment procedure. A procedure by Bo...

OBJECTIVE Height- and weight-based anthropometric indicators are used worldwide to characterize the nutritional status of populations. Based on the 1978 WHO/National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) growth reference, the World Health Organization has previously indicated that the standard deviation (SD) of Z-scores of these indicators is relatively constant across populations, irrespective o...

BACKGROUND Although there is evidence to tracking progress towards facility births within the UN Millennium Development Goals framework, we do not know whether women are deciding against home birth over their reproductive lives. Using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 44 countries, this study aims to investigate the patterns and shifts in childbirth locations and to determine wheth...

Background: Studies in developed countries have shown that deliveries which occur at home and under the supervision of unskilled attendants present a high risk of perinatal death. However, it is unclear, especially in subSaharan Africa (SSA) where studies are limited, on precisely how these factors may influence perinatal mortality. This is particularly of interest considering that majority of ...