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Journal of Statistics Applications & Probability

Abstract

Early marriage is still widely practiced in many parts of the world mainly in developing countries and dominant in Sub- Saharan countries. Ethiopia is also among theses Sub-Saharan countries which practices early marriage with the highest prevalence rate. The main purpose of this study was also to analyze associated factors of early marriage of women in Ethiopia with the consideration of regional variability of the practices using multilevel model. The study utilized secondary data collected on 9825 married women nested within 9 regions and two city adminstration of Ethiopia obtained from 2016 Ethiopia demographic and health survey(EDHS). Multilevel logistic regression model was applied to identify determinants factors of early marriage and its variation across regions. The results of the study revealed that among total women considered in the study, 60.8% women were married at their early age while 39.2% were married at legal age group. Among the candidate models, random intercept with fixed effect of the covariates was selected based on model information criteria among the candidate multilevel logistic regression models. Regarding the associate factors of early marriage of women, the selected model revealed that place of residence, religion of women, women education level, wealth index, husband education level, husband occupation status and total number of sibling were factors that significantly affects the early marriage of women at 5% significance level. Furthermore, the study revealed women who resides in rural area were 1.239 times more likely to experiences early married than those resides in urban areas and there were regional variability of proportion in women early marriage that the study takes into consideration as unobservable random effects. This study also recommends to implement more effective planning policies that target particular units at regional level particularly, education and wealth index have positive effect in reducing early marriage. As a result special attention needs to be paid to all regions in order to access education and improve the economic status for young women that helps in reducing early marriage.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.18576/jsap/110204

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