Adolescent motherhood in Bangladesh

S. M. Mostafa Kamal, Islamic University

This paper investigates underlying factors affecting adolescent motherhood in Bangladesh using 2004 Demographic and Health Survey data. The findings of the study suggest that 64% of the ever married adolescents have begun childbearing. About one-fourth of the childbirths of the adolescents was mistimed. Overall, 74% of the ever married adult women started childbearing in their teen ages. Both cross-sectional and fixed-effects binary logistic regression analyses yielded quantitatively important and statistically reliable estimates of the factors associated with adolescent childbearing. The results of the multivariate analyses reveal that women’s education, husband’s education, current and childhood place of residence, sex of household head, religion, wealth index and region are important determinants of adolescent motherhood. The logistic regression analyses yielded significantly increased risk of adolescent childbearing for rural women and women with female headed household and significantly decreased risk for the women with secondary level of schooling, non-Muslim women and the richest.