查看文章

Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is among the highest globally and relatively higher in West Africa compared to the other sub-regions of Africa. While there have been extensive studies on fertility in West Africa, the underlying spatial variations with regard to within and cross-border variations among countries has received little attention. This study examined spatial variations in fertility desire among thirteen (13) West African countries using data from the most recent Demographic and Health Survey conducted between 2010 and 2018. The analysis considers two fertility indicators; preference for another child and ideal number of children, and the spatial units were the states/regions/provinces of the countries included in the study. Bayesian spatial models were specified for the count and multi-categorical response variables respectively, with the use of Markov random field prior for the spatial components while Markov …