Exploring reproductive trajectories of youths of Oromia, Ethiopia: A life course approach

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Exploring reproductive trajectories of youths of Oromia, Ethiopia: A life course approach Tariku Dejene ID*, Eshetu Gurmu Center for Population Studies, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia * a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Dejene T, Gurmu E (2022) Exploring reproductive trajectories of youths of Oromia, Ethiopia: A life course approach. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0279773. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0279773 Editor: Joseph Gregory Rosen, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, UNITED STATES Received: July 22, 2022 Accepted: December 13, 2022 Published: December 30, 2022 Copyright: © 2022 Dejene, Gurmu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All the data files are publicly available from the DHS Program website at https://dhsprogram.com/data/available-datasets. cfm. Abstract In the context of continuous cultural, social, and economic changes happening around the globe, the predictable patterns of the life course of the past observed over successive birth cohorts will not remain stable across generations. In this study, three reproductive role indicators—first sexual encounter, first marriage, and first birth–for three synthetic birth cohorts were used to identify and characterize the reproductive trajectories of youths. In our analysis, for the sake of comparison with global literature, we considered youths to be between ages 15 and 24. The analysis was conducted using data extracted from the 2005, 2011, and 2016 Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey for Oromia National Regional State. Three synthetic birth cohorts of youths of birth years between 1975 and 1989 were constructed for the analysis. A sequence analysis based on dynamic hamming distance with partition around medoids technique was employed to extract the typologies of reproductive trajectories of youths. In addition, discrepancy analysis and a sequence regression tree analysis were employed to characterize the identified typologies of trajectories. Data management was done using STATA 14 and all analyses were carried out using R software. The study identified four different typologies of reproductive trajectories among the youth. The sex of respondents was the primary discriminating factor of the typologies of reproductive trajectories. The findings support the notion of changing norms in reproductive behavior among the less educated youth irrespective of sex. The discriminating power of education was stronger for female youth in urban areas than rural females. It implies that the postponement of reproductive role assumption was stronger among educated female youths residing in urban than their rural counterparts. Normative reproductive practices such as early marriage and adolescent fertility are still common practices that require efforts of communities and local government bodies to ameliorate these practices. Results of the study indicate that less educated youth should be targeted in programs that aim at improving youth empowerment (i.e., training and employment opportunities) as well as their sexual and reproductive health. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction Abbreviations: ASW, Average Silhouette Width; ASWw, Average Silhouette Width (weighted); DHD, Based on biological and psychological characteristics, a clear distinction can be made between children and adults. Children progress through stages in their life course and eventually PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279773 December 30, 2022 1 / 14 PLOS ONE Dynamic Hamming Distance; EA, Enumeration Area; EDHS, Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey; PAM, Partition around Medoids; PBC, Point Biserial Correlation. Exploring reproductive trajectories using a life course approach assume adult roles. Although children are perceived to be apolitical and unengaged in economics, this image of innocence will not be held in the case of youths [1]. Youth is a stage in the life course of an individual where the process of transitioning from childhood to adulthood happens. The transition period is a time of change in which young people make choices about their future and respond to these changes [2, 3]. Thus, youth is a critical stage in human development during which a young person leaves childhood behind and assumes new roles and responsibilities. In our analysis, youth is defined as groups of people who are between the ages of 15 and 24. The journey that young people take to adulthood involves transitions in many aspects of their lives. Here, rather than a single event, boundary crossing to adulthood is defined by participation in a variety of activities. These activities include a range of socioeconomic and demographic events. Finishing school, entering the labor force, becoming financially secure, getting married, and becoming a parent are some of the major events commonly used as markers of transition to adulthood [3–5]. Multiple processes, such as productive and reproductive, occur in the lives of individuals in such a way that the processes themselves interact with each other [6, 7]. Ethiopia has been undergoing demographic, social, and political transformation since the 1960s. The country had experienced political upheaval that led to regime changes during the previous century. For instance, the end of the imperial era in 1974 ushered in a period of political and social change in Ethiopian history [8–10]. Two decades later, the country adopted a formal population policy that recognized the interdependence among population, resources, the environment, and development [11]. In the MDG era, between 2000 and 2010, several policies and strategies regarding adolescent and youth reproductive health were introduced. These policies and strategies aimed to regulate and govern family relations and improve access and utilization of reproductive services [12–14]. Over a long time period, dramatic changes occurred in Ethiopia in terms of access and enrollment in primary and secondary education. Enrollment and gender parity in primary school, for example, have both improved. Furthermore, as a result of the introduction of free primary schooling as a policy intervention, the dropout rate has slowed down [15]. With the changes happening in the area of education and urbanization, young people have acquired increased agency that enabled them to make decisions at the moment than the previous generation regarding their reproductive behavior [16]. In this study, we attempted to investigate the reproductive trajectories of youths using debut to sex, entry to marriage, and (...truncated)