Early Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing in West Africa

Table 1

Bivariate distribution of union formation and first childbearing status by socioeconomic characteristics in West Africa.

Variable	Nigeria		Burkina Faso		Niger
	Union formation	Childbearing	Union formation	Childbearing	Union formation	Childbearing
Respondent’s education
None	73.93	67	80.73	77.82	79.45	81.61
Primary	13.65	14.7	12.4	16.56	14.36	10.77
Secondary/higher	12.43	18.31	6.87	5.62	6.1	7.61
Wealth index
Poorest	40	37.21	20.82	20.64	18.58	20.69
Poorer	33.8	33.14	24.99	23.28	21.85	23.81
Middle	15.87	17.4	21.49	22.21	23.29	21.06
Richer	7.76	8.71	18.61	19.94	23.37	21.93
Richest	2.56	3.53	14.08	13.93	12.91	12.51
Religion
Muslim	89.01	79.21	76.87	71.1	—	—
Christian	9.96	19.8	14.98	19.12
Other	0.53	0.19	8.15	9.78	—	—
Region
Northern	94.62	85.55	34.17	32.82	98.94	98.26
Southern	5.38	14.45	65.83	67.18	1.06	1.74
Sex of household health
Male	95.29	90.7	93.88	90.42	89.13	85.41
Female	4.71	9.3	6.12	9.58	10.87	14.59
Place of residence
Urban	13.25	14.37	15.97	17.42	7.23	7.5
Rural	86.75	85.63	84.03	82.58	92.77	92.5
Percent	27.41	13.85	24.24	11.68	59.66	26.95
Total	6653	6653	2690	2690	1570	1570

All the relationships were found statistically significant using the chi-square values.