Contraceptive use is considered as essential for protecting women’s health and rights, influencing fertility and population growth, and helping to promote economic development. The main objective of this study was to analysis the factors and spatial correlates of contraceptive use among women of childbearing age. The 2015 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS) data were used to identify the factors associated with contraceptive use in Rwanda. A Bayesian geo-additive model was used in order to account for fixed effects, nonlinear effects, spatial and random effects inherent in the data. The overall prevalence of use of any contraceptive method among married women of childbearing age in Rwanda was 52.7%. A woman’s age, wealth quintile, level of education, working status, number of living children, and exposure to the media was found to increase contraceptive use. The findings from the study also found disparities in contraceptive use at provincial and district level, where prevalence was higher in districts of Northern provinces and lower in districts of western provinces. The findings of this study suggest that exposure to information on contraceptive use in health centres, empowerment of women to access quality contraceptive-use services and religions to play an important role in explaining and informing their adherents on the importance of using a contraceptive method.

The main objective of this research is to identify the key determinants of poverty of household in Rwanda based on asset index and semi parametric modeling . The asset index for each household is established and thereafter the generalized additive mixed model is used to ascertain the key determinants of poverty of households in Rwanda. The semi parametric generalized additive mixed model allowed us to study the impact of nonlinear predictors as nonparametric and categorical predictors as parametric to the asset index. Using the Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey (2010), the characteristics of households and household heads are considered. Our findings show that the level of education, gender and age of household head, region (province), size of the household (number of household members) and place of residence (urban or rural) are significant predictors of poverty of households in Rwanda.

Domestic violence is a global public health problem. It is prevalent in both the developed world and developing countries. The objective of this study is to identify the factors that are associated with domestic violence against women of reproductive age in Rwanda. The data from the 2014/2015 Rwanda demographic and health survey were used. Generalized linear mixed model was used to account for random effects, overdispersion of residual and heterogeneity. The findings of this study revealed that wealth quintiles, education level of the husband or partner, polygamy, alcohol status of husband or partner, size of the family, number of sexual partners including the husband in the last 12 months, the province the victim lived in, the ownership of an asset in the form of a house or land and the societal attitude towards wife-beating, were the determinants of domestic violence in women of reproductive age. The findings of the risk factors in the current study can help the policy makers, public health workers and institutions in charge of gender monitoring in Rwanda to come up with effective strategies to reduce the domestic violence levels directed against women.