Definition
For women who gave birth in the last three to five years, PPABMO_ALL (M8_x) indicates the duration, in months, of postpartum abstinence. Women who were still abstaining at the time of interview were excluded from PPABMO_ALL, but they are included in the similar variable PPABMOC_ALL.
According to the DHS Recode Manuals, the maximum period allowed during the data editing was the interval between the date of birth of the child and the date of conception of the following child (with date of birth minus nine months used for the date of conception) or until the date of interview if there was no following birth. Cases exceeding this duration were left with the original response, but are coded with one of the flag codes on PPABFLAG_ALL and are coded as "Inconsistent" on PPABMOC_ALL.
PPABMO_ALL consists of a set of six separate variables, covering the most recent birth (PPABMO_01) up to the sixth-most-recent birth (i.e., PPABMO_02, PPABMO_03, PPABMO_04, PPABMO_05, and PPABMO_06) during the reference period prior to the survey. If PPABMO_ALL is included in a data extract, all these separate variables are included in a researcher's data file.
For surveys including this question, information for this variable was collected on all births, up to a maximum of six, in the reference period. In many cases, data were hypothetically collected on up to six births, but no women in the survey had so many births (e.g., no woman had 4 or more births in 3 years, or had 5 or 6 births in 5 years). If, for example, no woman in a survey had 6 births in five years and only blank values were included in the original DHS file, then PPABMO_06 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
