KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_ALL (B17_x) variables are 2-digit variables.

99 = NIU (not in universe)

Description

KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_ALL (B17_x) reports the day of the month of the child's birth, according to the Ethiopian calendar. This variable is only available for Ethiopian samples.

KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_ALL consists of a set of twenty separate variables, covering the most recent birth (KIDBIRTHDAY_01) up to the twentieth-most-recent birth (KIDBIRTHDAY_20) for a female respondent of childbearing age. If KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_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 KIDBIRTHDAY_20 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.

Comparability

KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_ALL (B17_x) has no comparability problems.

All standard date variables in the Ethiopian DHS samples are given in the Ethiopian calendar. The Ethiopian year consists of 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30 days and one month of 5 days (6 days in a leap year). According to the Gregorian calendar, in a non-leap year, the Ethiopian year begins September 11 and ends the following September 10. The 13th month of the Ethiopian calendar falls in early September. In general, the Ethiopian calendar is 92 months behind the Gregorian calendar.

In the 2016 Ethiopia sample, the date variables use the Ethiopian calendar as a starting point, but some recoding has been done to make the Ethiopian data resemble the 12 month units of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the month of January (month 1) in the Gregorian calendar has 31 days, while the month of Meskerem (month 1) in the Ethiopian calendar has only 30 days. In the conversion process, the first day of Tikimt (month 2) is recoded as the 31st day of month 1. Month 2 in the conversion will have 28 or 29 days (as the Gregorian calendar's February has), depending on whether the year in question is a leap year according to the Gregorian calendar. By doing this conversion, The DHS Program distributes the 365 days of the Ethiopian year into just 12 months, allowing DHS to apply the same procedures used in surveys for other countries.

Comparability - Standard DHS

KIDBIRTHDAY_ET_ALL (B17_x) is included in Phase VII forward of the standard DHS questionnaire (for Ethiopian samples).

Universe