Iranian women’s preferred birth interval: non-parametric survival analysis

Arezoo Bagheri, National Population Studies and Comprehensive Management Institute, Iran
Mahsa Saadati, National Population Studies and Comprehensive Management Institute, Iran

The duration of birth intervals has received attention in demography and public health research because of its implication for fertility, maternal and child health. Spacing preferences also have potential effects on the level of fertility. In a cross-sectional study, a structured questioner was used to collect childbearing attitudes and its social, economical and cultural factors of 6177, 15-49 Iranian married women in 2014, by multi-stage stratified sampling. The main aim of this article is to compare the birth interval lengths that women would prefer to have in confronting some influential factors by Kaplan-Meier estimate and Log-Rank test as non-parametric survival analysis tools. The mean and median of preferred birth intervals were 4.323 and 4.000 years, respectively. The results presented that Kaplan-Meier estimates were significantly different between levels of woman’s place of residence, educational level, activity, number of ever born children and family income (p-value<0.05).