Comparing Maternal Health Indicators between Teenagers and Older Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from DHS

Abstract

Most literature supports the notion that teenage childbearing is generally associated with higher risk of adverse maternal and newborn health outcomes. There is however continued debate on whether this association is mainly a factor of unfavorable sociodemographic conditions of adolescent mothers or due primarily to their biological immaturity. Problems related to study designs and analytic methods (i.e. adjusting for all potential confounders), form the crux of this divergence. Hospital-based studies employing less-rigorous analytic methods mostly reveal that young maternal age is ‘causally’ associated with increased poor obstetric indicators such as antenatal care attendance, delivery by skilled personnel, and peri-natal death (Anandalakshmy and Buckshee 1993; LeGrand and Mbacke 1993; Ali and Lulseged 1997; Botting et al. 1998; Orvos et al. 1999; Alam 2000; Wasunna and Mohammed 2002). The independent effect of maternal age on the frequency of preterm delivery, low birth weight and neonatal mortality could nevertheless be significant as age at first childbirth falls below 16 years of age (Friede et al. 1987; Lee et al. 1998; Phipps and Sowers 2002)