A multilevel analysis of trends and predictors associated with teenage pregnancy in Zambia (2001–2018)

Abstract

Plain language summary Teenage pregnancy continues to be a major social and public health challenge in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where prevalence rates are on the rise. Even if considerable effort has been made over the years to study determining factors of teenage pregnancy in SSA, few studies have looked at the trends and associated factors over a longer period. This study in Zambia, thus sought to fill this gap in knowledge by simultaneously investigating trends of teenage pregnancy as well as its individual and contextual determining factors. Here, we used a pooled dataset from Zambia’s 2001 to 2018 DHS to run separate multilevel logistic regression models to examine several individual and contextual level factors influencing teenage pregnancy. Findings show that trends of teenage pregnancy in Zambia have shown an overall decrease of only 2% between 2001 and 2018. Almost all the socioeconomic and demographic variables were consistently associated with teenage pregnancy. The study shows that teenage pregnancy remains a social and public health challenge in Zambia as the country has seen little decrease in the prevalence over the years under consideration. Concerted effort must be made to improve literacy levels, reduce poverty and enhance sexual health promotion through the mass media in view of cultural norms, which may prevent parents and children from discussion sexual education topics thus exacerbate the vice.

Keywords

• Teenage girls
• Teenage pregnancy
• Trends
• Multilevel analysis
• Zambia