Trends in Adolescent Fertility in Low and Middle-Income Countries

Trends in Adolescent Fertility in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Developing evidence-based advocacy messages for change (Organized in collaboration with the Evidence Project)

Adolescents and young adults (aged 10-24) represent 26% of the population in developing countries compared to 17% in more developed countries. In 2013, adolescent fertility rate (15-19) was estimated at 90 ‰ across all developing countries compared to 17 in the developed world. Higher levels of adolescent fertility are associated with higher unmet need for contraception, worse maternal and child health outcomes, as well as low access to social and economic opportunities for young people. In the Millennium Development Goals, adolescent fertility was one indicator of progress towards universal access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. That target has been carried over to the Sustainable Development Goals (3.7) last month, because progress is still much needed. In order to promote interest and progress in this area of action, the new INDEPTH Working Group on Fertility and SRH, in collaboration with the USAID-funded Evidence Project (Population Council), has committed to create and disseminate more analyses and materials on adolescent fertility and its relation to socioeconomic conditions with the ultimate aim of informing FP and RH programming for adolescents

Objectives: 

1) Prepare the data sets for comparative adolescent fertility analyses
2) Data quality checks of the variables of interest
3) Analyses on three topics:
- Contribution of increasing educational opportunities to changes in adolescent fertility and
delays in age at first birth
- Socioeconomic inequalities and pathway to premarital motherhood and poverty
- Identifying the most vulnerable adolescents for unintended pregnancies

Expected Outcomes:
Publish scientific articles and create advocacy tools such as policy briefs that may be used to educate decision makers and program implementers to reduce adolescent fertility and increase educational and socioeconomic opportunities for adolescents and young people in low and middle income countries.

Requirements:

a) Nominations must be made by centre leaders only
b) Photo and biosketch of nominees must be attached.
c) All participants are required to bring along laptops to the workshop.
d) Data required For all
- The residency file (Madimah format) or the variables needed to create the residency file: Individualid, Locationid, Householdid, Compound, DoB, Sex, StartEventCode, StartEventDate, EndEventCode, EndEventDate, MotherID
- The delivery data file At least one of the following variables, and as many as possible:
- Date of first union AND/OR marital status at entry and union changes
- Recent educational level AND/OR educational attainment follow-up - Parity at entry AND/OR rank of each birth
- Intendedness status of births - Households goods or constructed wealth indicator - Occupation of household head