Assessing and interpreting birth spacing goals in Costa Rica.

ABSTRACT

PIP: Couples may use contraception in order to stop childbearing once they have borne their desired number of children and/or to lengthen birth intervals. A procedure for assessing birth spacing goals is proposed and applied to data collected in the 1992-93 Costa Rican Reproductive Health Survey (ESR). The ESR is a nationally representative, Demographic and Health Survey-type survey of approximately 3600 women aged 15-49 years. Based upon backward survival analysis, preferred birth intervals are estimated to range between 3.5 and 4.5 years, 2-3 years shorter than crude estimates of intervals using data on open or last closed intervals, which are upwardly biased by selection and left censoring effects. To achieve these spacing preferences, couples must spend about 40% of their time using contraception. An inverse relationship was identified between desired family size and desired birth interval in only parity-specific analyses.