Determinants of Unintended Childbearing in a High Fertility Society: A Case Study of Nepal

Rajan Adhikari, Ministry of Health, Nepal

Unintended Childbearing is one of the most important topic that has been the focus of attention for many demographers as well as policy makers in the developing countries. In this paper an attempt has been made to study the levels, trends and determinants of unintended childbearing in Nepal by using the data from Nepal Family Health Survey 1996 and Nepal Fertility, Family Planning and Health Survey 1991. The results show that in Nepal, the prevalence of unintended pregnancies in 1996 was 43.3 percent and unintended births in the 3 year period preceding the survey was 37.2 per cent. The level of unintended pregnancies in 1991 was 34.7 per cent and unintended birth was 26.5 per cent. The increase was 9 percent in unintended pregnancy and 11 per cent in unintended childbirth. Determinants of unintended childbearing were investigated according to the conceptual framework. Logistic regression was used to analyse the effects of the selected variables after controlling for the effects of other variables in the model. For unintended pregnancy, the most important determinants were maternal education, standard of living, age of mother, and number of living children. The important determinants for unintended birth were maternal and spouse education, media exposure, length of preceding birth interval, number of living children, and age of mother.