Definition
OTHBIRTHININT_ALL (B15_x) indicates whether there were any other live births in the interval between this birth and the previously reported birth. The survey form included the question, "Were there any other live births between (NAME OF PREVIOUS BIRTH) and (NAME), including any children who died?"
For DHS Phase III only, OTHBIRTHININT_ALL (B15_x) is limited to "Births for which the interval between the birth and the previously reported birth was four or more years (B14 =1)," according to the Recode Manuals. For later Phases, the universe is all second- and higher-order births.
The DHS Recode Manuals include the following explanatory note about this variable:
Variables B14 and B15 are questions used in the interview to try and ascertain if the respondent had omitted any live births while reporting her birth history. The birth history may have been modified during the interviewing process, and the responses may not now correspond to the interval between the birth and the preceding birth recorded in this section. The data have been included to help indicate cases where the respondent may have omitted live births while originally reporting the birth history. The omitted births should be included in this final version of the birth history.
OTHBIRTHININT_ALL consists of a set of twenty separate variables, covering the most recent birth (OTHBIRTHININT_01) up to the twentieth-most-recent birth (OTHBIRTHININT_20) for a female respondent of childbearing age. If OTHBIRTHININT_ALL is included in a data extract, all these separate variables are included in a researcher's data file.
Information for this variable was collected on all births for a woman, up to a maximum of twenty births. In many cases, data were hypothetically collected on up to twenty births, but no women in the survey had so many births (e.g., no woman had 19 or 20 births). If, for example, no woman in a survey had 20 births and only blank values were included in the original DHS file, then OTHBIRTHININT_20 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
