Estimation of number of ever born children using zero truncated count model: evidence from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey

Fertility is an important demographic indicator for any country and there has always been a concern for number of ever born children to know the transition of fertility pattern intensively. Child ever born is the count response variable ranges from 1 to 15 and was originally collected by the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) considering the reproductive women who had given at least one birth. This study proposes zero truncated Poisson and zero truncated negative binomial regression models in order to find the best fitted model to estimate number of ever born children using BDHS 2014 dataset. Findings reveal that, the number of children increases with the increment of respondent’s age but number of children declines if education status of respondents as well as their husbands’ increases. Similarly, religion, wealth index and wanted last child have significantly influenced the number of child ever born. Surprisingly, the number of children ever born to a mother from rural area does not differ significantly from that of urban area in Bangladesh, though there exists a little fluctuation in the number of children ever born to a mother living in seven administrative divisions. Intension of contraceptive use has no influence on number of ever born children to a mother.