MATERNAL AGE AT BIRTH AND LOW BIRTH WEIGHT (LBW) IN INDONESIA (ANALYSIS OF RISKESDAS 2018)

Abstract

Low birth weight (LBW) is one of the health problems that cause long-term and short-term consequences to a child, mainly due to maternal age, which is determined by very young or old maternal age. This study aims to determine maternal age's effect on LBW in a larger population while controlling for factors such as maternal education and occupation, residence area, socioeconomic status, iron consumption during pregnancy, Maternal and Child Health (MCH) book, gestational age, and ANC K4. The data for this study were obtained from the Basic Health Research 2018, and the unit of analysis was mothers with children under the age of five. A risk factor model approach was adopted to determine the association between maternal age variables and the incidence of LBW using multiple logistic regression with complex samples. The risk of LBW for mothers aged 20 or 35 years compared to mothers aged 21-34 years was 1.342 (95%CI:1.165-1.546). The final model equation included confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, MCH card ownership, gestational age, complete ANC, and CED in mothers. As a result, thus very young or old women were also at risk of having LBW children. The final multivariate analysis showed that maternal age at delivery had a highly significant association with LBW in Indonesia. This makes it necessary to educate pregnant women in particular and all levels of society to minimize the risk of LBW by preventing early marriage or delivering a baby at a very old age