Abstract:
Fertility is defined as the ability to conceive and bears children. It is one of the major
components of population growth and age structure change globally fertility. Total fertility rate
globally decreasing but in sub Saharan African countries still were increasing. Although there is
a significant reduction in Ethiopia over the past decades, but in Somali region of Ethiopia the
fertility still high. To assess the determinants of fertility in Somalia region, Eastern Ethiopia by
count regression model. A community based-cross sectional study was conducted.1, 391 eligible
women were from Somalia region of Ethiopia. Among thus, 1,002 are gave live birth in their life
time. This study was undertaken using secondary data from the Ethiopian demographic and
health surveys 2016 dataset, which was collected by Central statistical agency of Ethiopia from
January 18 to June 27, 2016.data analysis, was done by using count regression model. In this
study fertility was treated as count data and determinants of high fertility including the socio economic and demographic variables were assessed using counted data analysis models. The
variance (8.195) is higher than mean of child ever born per mother (5.08) and the counted data
has no zero value. This is an indication for over dispersion. In this study zero truncated negative
binomial better fits the data. The result showed that, the variables like; current age of mothers
,age of mother at first birth, place of residence, number of house hold members, number of died
children for both sex, religion, mother education level had significant factors on child ever born
fertility. Factors that was high effect on fertility for Somali region, Ethiopia were, mothers first
birth is in girl hood age, give birth until natural suspension, their religion, most mothers were
uneducated, their residence, intent to increase their household members and high number of
dead children in the region were factors to high number of child ever born. By using Zero
truncated negative binomial mode.
