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Low Fertility and Reproductive Health in East Asia pp 187–209Cite as

Community-Level Effects on the Use of Reproductive Health Services in Rural China

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Part of the book series: International Studies in Population ((ISIP,volume 11))

Abstract

This chapter uses an ecological approach to assess whether village development and county demographics have direct or indirect effects on the relative likelihood of married women having a reproductive health (RH) checkup in rural China. The analysis uses multilevel models and data from the National Population and Reproductive Health Survey and the 2000 census. The study demonstrates that the effects of the village-level predictors on RH checkup are wholly indirect and are accounted for by either county sociodemographics or individual characteristics. County sociodemographics have direct effects, and our primary conclusion is that regional differences appear to be more influential than subregional (between-village) differences in predicting the odds of RH checkups. The findings also suggest that the status of women has a significant influence on whether or not they have an RH checkup.

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Acknowledgments

An early version of this chapter was presented at the International Conference on Low Fertility and Reproductive Health in East and Southeast Asia Tokyo, Japan, November 12–14, 2008. We thank Robert Retherford and the conference participants for their helpful comments and suggestions, and also thank Feng Hou for research assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Zheng Wu & Christoph M. Schimmele

  2. Population Research Institute, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Shuzhuo Li

  3. Institute for Population and Development Studies, Xi’an University of Finance and Economics, Xi’an, China

    Yan Wei

  4. Institute for Population and Development Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Quanbao Jiang

  5. Department of Sociology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Zhen Guo

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  1. Zheng Wu
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  2. Shuzhuo Li
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  4. Yan Wei
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Correspondence to Zheng Wu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Population Research Institute and College of Economics, Nihon University, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Naohiro Ogawa

  2. Department of Global Health and Population Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Iqbal H. Shah

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Wu, Z., Li, S., Schimmele, C.M., Wei, Y., Jiang, Q., Guo, Z. (2015). Community-Level Effects on the Use of Reproductive Health Services in Rural China. In: Ogawa, N., Shah, I. (eds) Low Fertility and Reproductive Health in East Asia. International Studies in Population, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9226-4_10

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