Social capital and fertility behaviors: a cross-sectional study in Iranian women health care workers

Abstract Background Fertility, in addition to the biomedical aspect, is phenomena of social, economic and demographic changes. Social network were considered for understanding fertility behaviors and changes in the levels of fertility. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between social capital and childbirth behaviors in Iranian women employees. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2017 on 536 women health care workers who randomly selected from health care setting Babol/Iran. Data were collected using demographic, childbearing behavior and social capital questionnaires. The SPSS-21 software was employed to analysis the data at a significant level of 0.05. Results The results of the study showed that, there was significant relationship between number of pregnancy and social capital (P = 0.039). Furthermore, social capital has a significant relationship with the time of pregnancy (P = 0.043), the time of pregnancy in women with high social capital was observed to be relatively 30% shorter compare the women with low social capital. Conclusion Social capital, as one of the important factors influencing childbirth behaviors, should be considered in population planning and policy making.