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Preceding child sex and survival status [message #22119] Thu, 04 February 2021 00:57 Go to next message
sumonrupop is currently offline  sumonrupop
Messages: 23
Registered: August 2015
Location: Rajshahi
Member

Greetings,

I am working on birth spacing using Bangladeshi DHS. For this I am trying to calculate survival status and sex of the preceding child. However, I could not find the variables indicating the survival status and sex of the preceding sibling. There are couples of related questions discussion over this issue in the DHS forum, however, I did not find these as helpful to solve my issues.

Any help in this regard (variable name or derivation code in Stata) will be much appreciated.

Thank you,

NK


Md. Nuruzzaman Khan
Re: Preceding child sex and survival status [message #22128 is a reply to message #22119] Fri, 05 February 2021 09:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3016
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS Research & Data Analysis Director, Tom Pullum:

This kind of comparison of successive siblings is very much worth doing, but is not common. The attached Stata program, in text format, shows how to construct the file. You will want to include more variables. Good luck

Re: Preceding child sex and survival status [message #22144 is a reply to message #22128] Sat, 06 February 2021 07:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
sumonrupop is currently offline  sumonrupop
Messages: 23
Registered: August 2015
Location: Rajshahi
Member

Dear Tom Pullum,
Many thanks for your quick and clear response. However, the codes you sent did not solve my issues though they were quite helpful.

I am using 2017/2018 Bangladesh Demography and Health Survey data. Variable b11 in the KR file of BDHS represents preceding birth interval where 5318 response was recorded. I need sex and survival status for each of the child included to generate b11 variable, i.e-

1. Sex and survival status of the last child (variable b4 and b5 in the KR file)

2. Sex and survival status of the childs with whom the last childs were compared to generate b11 variable


Thanks in advance!

Regards
NK


Md. Nuruzzaman Khan
Re: Preceding child sex and survival status [message #22178 is a reply to message #22144] Tue, 09 February 2021 10:22 Go to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3016
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member
Following is a response from DHS Research & Data Analysis Director, Tom Pullum:

The Stata program I sent yesterday was intended to be the basis of a program to do what you want to do. I have added to it. The attached version includes the sex of the previous sibling (b4_sib) and the survival status of the previous sibling (b5_sib). It also includes "b11_test" which shows how b11 is calculated. It matches b11 in the data file EXCEPT for multiple births. The DHS calculation of the birth interval preceding a multiple birth goes back farther in the birth history. I will not take the time to bring in those cases.

The calculation of b11 changed during DHS-7. Previously, it was just the difference between b3 (century month code of birth) for successive births. Now we calculate b11 with b18, which is the century day code of the birth. You calculate the difference in cdc's, divide by 365.25/12 (the average number of days in a month), and truncate to an integer.

As I said, this calculation does not apply to births with b0>1. However, I strongly recommend that you omit those births, as well as births with b0=1 (the first in a multiple birth) because survival is much worse for multiple births. We have found that usually the strongest single predictor of child mortality is being part of a multiple birth. They tend to be premature low birthweight and they have greater competition for maternal resources.

Note that this program runs on the BR file, not the KR file, because the siblings may have been born earlier than the reference period for the KR file. It is then reduced to be equivalent to the KR file with a restriction to b19<60. You would merge this file with the KR file to bring in the covariates that are in the KR file.

[Updated on: Tue, 09 February 2021 10:24]

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