title: Assessing and interpreting birth spacing goals in Costa Rica.
abstract: A procedure for assessing birth spacing goals, an important component of fertility preferences, is proposed and applied to 1993 Costa Rican data. Based on a reverse or backward survival analysis, preferred birth intervals are estimated to range between 3.5 and 4.5 years (1.5 years for the interval union to first birth). These intervals are 2 or 3 years shorter than crude estimates from data on open or last closed intervals, which are upwardly biased by selection and left censoring effects. To achieve these spacing preferences, a cohort must spend about two-thirds of the time using contraception (one-third in the interval union to first birth). An inverse association between desired family size and desired birth interval is evident only in parity-specific analyses.
authors.affiliation: Office of Population Research, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rosero-Bixby
mesh_terms: D001721:Birth Intervals; D003364:Costa Rica; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D012189:Retrospective Studies