Does higher spousal age difference cause higher and earlier fertility among adolescent girls? Evidence from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey

High spousal age difference shows different reproductive outcomes, especially among the married adolescent girls. This is because older husbands use to take reproductive decisions alone and try to compensate for delayed marriage. This study hypothesizes that adolescents with comparatively older husbands tend to get more children and have children earlier than their counterparts. Bangladesh DHS 2007 was used for the in-depth analyses. About 43% of the adolescents were married before the legal age (18 years) at marriage for girls in Bangladesh. About 22.3% of the adolescents had spousal age difference 5 years or less. Almost half (47%) of the married adolescents have their first child within one year of marriage. Poisson regression model suggested that the relative risk of having children among adolescent with spousal age difference 5 years or less was 0.554 compared to the adolescents with spousal age difference more than 15 years. The relative risk increased to 0.730 for spousal age difference between 6-10 years. A binary logistic regression model suggested that adolescents having spousal age difference 11-15 years were 2.45 times significantly more likely to have their first child within one year of their marriage compared to adolescents having spousal age difference 5 years or less.