Fitting The First Birth Interval in Indonesia Using Weibull Proportional Hazards Model

Abstract

The first birth interval is one of the indicators of women’s fertility rate. Because in most cases the first birth interval contains censored observations, the only appropriate statistical method to handle such data is survival analysis. The main objective of this study is to analyze several socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect the first birth interval in Indonesia using the univariate and multivariate survival analysis, that is Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression model, respectively. The sample is obtained from 2012 Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) and consists of 28242 ever married women aged 15-49 at the time of interview. The results show that age at the first birth, women's educational level, husband’s educational level, contraceptive knowledge, wealth index, and employment status are the significant factors affecting the first birth interval in Indonesia.

Keywords

• first birth interval
• fertility rate
• survival analysis
• cox regression model