Fertility behaviour in Uganda: Does partner age difference matter?

Abstract

High fertility in developing countries often strains socio-economic resources and impedes the achievements of national policies and individual goals. In this study, we investigated the effect of partner age difference on fertility in Uganda, a high fertility country in Sub-Sahara Africa. Data was drawn from the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. Poisson regression model was used to isolate the effect partner age difference on fertility. Our findings from both unadjusted and adjusted regression models suggested that partner age difference had no effect on fertility in Uganda. However, the observed direction of flow was that; women with younger partners had slightly lower fertility (IRR:0.97 CI:0.8446–1.1159) while those with older partners by 1-5years had slightly higher fertility (IRR:1.05 CI:0.9532–1.1652) relative to women whose age was not different from their partners’.