(Infographics courtesy of PSA-7)
CEBU CITY – Five percent of women in Central Visayas have experienced teenage pregnancy, an official of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)-7 said Thursday.
Citing the 2022 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), Engr. Leopoldo Alfanta Jr., chief statistical specialist of PSA-7, said that women aged 15 to 19 in Central Visayas who have ever been pregnant is the same as the national figure at 5 percent.
“These are the percentages of women age 15 to19 years who have had or were pregnant with their first child at the time of the survey. Five percent of women age 15 to 19 years have ever been pregnant, 2 percent of them have had a live birth, 3 percent of women age 15-19 years are currently pregnant, and less than 1 percent of women age 15 to 19 years have ever had a pregnancy loss,” Alfanta said during the regional data dissemination forum at the Golden Prince Hotel here.
He also said that Filipino women aged 25 to 49 initiate their first sexual intercourse at median age of 21 years.
“This is the same with Central Visayas wherein the median age of first sex is also 21 years,” he said.
Meanwhile, Alfanta reported that the fertility rate among women in the region has decreased from 4.4 in 1993 to 2.0 in 2022.
Total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have by the end of her childbearing years.
The national survey shows that Central Visayas and Eastern Visayas ranked fourth in terms of having the lowest fertility rate at 2.0.
“Today, the data on women in Central Visayas shows that there is an average of two children per woman,” Alfanta said.
The master sample frame of the 2022 NDHS was constructed based on 2010 census of population and housing and updated using the results of the 2015 census of population and has two-staged stratified sampling design -- systematic selection of 1,247 primary sampling units (PSU) and 22 to 29 housing units selected per PSU using systematic sampling conducted between May to July 2022. (PNA)
