{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]],"date-time":"2026-09-29T06:05:30Z","timestamp":1790661930225,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]],"date-time":"2026-09-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1790640000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Reprod. Health"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Somalia has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, occurring alongside widespread socioeconomic disadvantage, low female educational attainment, and limited access to reproductive health services and information.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Objective<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>This study examines the socioeconomic, demographic, and information-access determinants of fertility among ever-married Somali women and identifies the count-regression model that best represents total children ever born.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Data were drawn from the 2020 Somali Health and Demographic Survey (SDHS), restricted to 10,772 ever-married women aged 15\u201349 years with complete information on all study variables. Children ever born were modeled using Poisson, Negative Binomial (NB) and Multilevel Negative Binomial (MENB) regression. Model selection was based on log-likelihood, AIC, and BIC, with comparisons restricted to models with comparable likelihood frameworks.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      The distribution of children ever born was right-skewed, with a mean of 4.11 children and evidence of over-dispersion. The MENB model provided the best fit, with the lowest AIC (45,392.37) and BIC (45,691.04), indicating the importance of accounting for both over-dispersion and clustering. Age was the strongest predictor of fertility; women aged 45\u201349 years had approximately 7.5 times the expected number of children compared with those aged 15\u201319 years (IRR\u2009=\u20097.52, 95% CI: 6.94\u20138.14,\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u2009&amp;lt;\u2009.001). Higher education (IRR\u2009=\u20090.70) and higher wealth were associated with lower fertility. Significant regional differences were observed, while nomadic women had lower fertility than urban women (IRR\u2009=\u20090.84,\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u2009&amp;lt;\u2009.001). Divorced and widowed women also had lower fertility than currently married women. Employment, radio, and television exposure were not significant.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Fertility in Somalia remains high but is strongly shaped by age, education, wealth, marital status and region. Expanding female education, reducing poverty, and improving access to reproductive health services and information are essential to support improve maternal and child health outcomes across Somali populations<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/frph.2026.1907831","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]],"date-time":"2026-09-29T05:51:07Z","timestamp":1790661067000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Socioeconomic and demographic determinants of children ever born among ever-married women in Somalia: a multilevel negative binomial regression analysis"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"8","author":[{"given":"Abdirahman Osman","family":"Alin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Health Science, Somali National University","place":["Mogadishu, Somalia"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","volume-title":"The Demography of the Labor Force in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities","author":"Lam","year":"2019"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e13948","DOI":"10.1016\/j.heliyon.2023.e13948","article-title":"Modeling on number of children ever born and its determinants among married women of reproductive age in Ethiopia: a Poisson regression analysis","volume":"9","author":"Cherie","year":"2023","journal-title":"Heliyon"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1186\/s41118-024-00211-6","article-title":"A global perspective on household size and composition, 1970\u20132020","volume":"80","author":"Esteve","year":"2024","journal-title":"Genus"},{"key":"B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"139","DOI":"10.1080\/00324728.2017.1291986","article-title":"Trends in the age at reproductive transitions in the developing world: the role of education","volume":"71","author":"Bongaarts","year":"2017","journal-title":"Popul Stud (NY)"},{"key":"B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"417","DOI":"10.3390\/bs13050417","article-title":"Determinants of fertility intentions of the women in Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2014an example from the Semberija region","volume":"13","author":"Golub","year":"2023","journal-title":"Behav Sci (Basel)"},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"230","DOI":"10.31014\/aior.1992.06.04.549","article-title":"Socioeconomic and proximate determinants of high fertility in Timor-Leste","volume":"6","author":"Rajagukguk","year":"2023","journal-title":"J Econ Bus"},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0257570","article-title":"Socio-economic and demographic determinants of fertility in six selected Pacific island countries: an empirical study","volume":"16","author":"Lal","year":"2021","journal-title":"PLoS One"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e35087","DOI":"10.1016\/j.heliyon.2024.e35087","article-title":"Effects of extreme climate events and child mortality on total fertility rate in Bangladesh","volume":"10","author":"Atiqul Haq","year":"2024","journal-title":"Heliyon"},{"key":"B9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/s12546-024-09340-3","article-title":"Regional fertility predictors based on socioeconomic determinants in Slovakia","volume":"41","author":"Nestorov\u00e1 Dick\u00e1","year":"2024","journal-title":"J Popul Res"},{"key":"B10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1007\/s13755-018-0064-y","article-title":"Estimation of number of ever born children using zero truncated count model: evidence from Bangladesh demographic and health survey","volume":"7","author":"Kiser","year":"2018","journal-title":"Heal Inf Sci Syst"},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1357","DOI":"10.1080\/09720510.2019.1709328","article-title":"Multilevel Poisson regression modeling to identify factors influencing the number of children ever born to married women in Oman","volume":"23","author":"Al-Balushi","year":"2020","journal-title":"J Stat Manag Syst"},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s44155-024-00122-z","article-title":"Trends in maternal education - 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