Definition
For women who gave birth in the three to five years before the survey, BRSFEDCAT_ALL indicates whether she ever breastfed, and, if so, whether she is still breastfeeding the child.
BRSFEDCAT_ALL consists of a set of up to six separate variables, covering the most recent birth (BRSFEDCAT_01) up to, potentially, the sixth-most-recent birth (i.e., BRSFEDCAT_02, BRSFEDCAT_03, BRSFEDCAT_04, BRSFEDCAT_05, and BRSFEDCAT_06) during the reference period prior to the survey. If BRSFEDCAT_ALL is included in a data extract, all these separate variables are included in a researcher's data file.
The information in BRSFEDCAT_ALL was collected for all births within the reference period preceding the survey. 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 BRSFEDCAT_06 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
The related variable BRSFEDUR_ALL (M4_x) reports the number of months of breastfeeding for women who are no longer breastfeeding. BRSFEDMO_ALL (M5_x) reports the calculated number of months of breastfeeding, including women who were still breastfeeding at the time of the interview.
