Definition
For women who gave birth in a health facility in the five years preceding the survey, DELTIME_ALL (M61_x) reports the length of time the mother and child stayed at the health facility after delivery. Following DHS convention, intervals reported in hours are coded with a "1" in the first digit, intervals reported in days are coded with a "2" in the first digit, and intervals reported in weeks are coded with a "3" in the first digit.
DELTIME_ALL consists of a set of six separate variables, covering the most recent birth (DELTIME_01) up to the sixth-most-recent birth (i.e., DELTIME_02, DELTIME_03, DELTIME_04, DELTIME_05, and DELTIME_06) during the reference period prior to the survey. If DELTIME_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 DELTIME_06 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
Some surveys, specified in the Comparability section, collected this information for the last-born child only (DELTIME_01).
