PONE-D-23-22238Residential and wealth-related disparities for high fertility preferences and it’s contributing factors among reproductive-aged women in Ethiopia: a decomposition analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alemu,

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

PONE-D-23-22238

"Residential and wealth-related disparities for high fertility preferences and it’s contributing factors among reproductive-aged women in Ethiopia: a decomposition analysis"

Thank you for submitting your interesting paper for publication in the PLOS ONE journal. Generally, the manuscript is well-designed; however, I have a few concerns that need to be addressed before formal acceptance for publication.

Conclusion and recommendations:

The provided recommendations are broad and might pose challenges for relevant authorities to implement based on the study's findings. Therefore, it would be beneficial if the authors could provide specific recommendations directed towards the relevant stakeholders.

The implication of the findings:

Summarize the practical significance of your findings. For instance, you can summarise how the observed findings impact existing practices or policies. This would consider the relevance and potential consequences of this study's findings.

Further, you could discuss the generalizability of your findings to other populations or settings. This could clarify the extent to which your results can be applied beyond the specific context of your study.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript is generally interesting and with good insight. The methdology section specfically data analysis technique was interesting and able to answer the research quastions It will be better enough for comments and simply track sections if it could have page and line numbers.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this highly relevant manuscript. I enjoyed reading it. The manuscript is well designed.

Here below, I’ve highlighted my comments to improve the paper prior to publication.

Overall, it would be great if the authors put the page numbers and line numbers to easily cite the areas of concern.

A. Abstract

1. The recommendations are general and could be difficult to take action by concerned bodies based on the findings of this study. Hence, it would be good if the authors put specific recommendations to relevant stakeholders (policymakers, planners, programmers and practitioners) to alleviate such issue.

B. Main document

Introduction

1. The authors put a good background to the current study. It would be also great to put the existing initiatives by the government to address the problem in a paragraph (including policy, strategy, plans and service access, etc). For example, National population policy and reproductive health strategy of the country could be consulted.

Measurements of variables in the methods section

1. The categorization of the region variable needs reference citation. It could have effect on both residence and wealth status indicators.

2. The wealth index concept and its construction need more elaboration (particularly what it intends to measure and what type of data was used in its calculation). You could visit the DHS Program regarding wealth index construction and also cite the country’s 2016 DHS survey methodology.

Data analysis

1. Why the authors preferred to use the Erreygers normalized concentration index (ECI) in the presence of other similar indices such as the Wagstaff’s concentration index?

2. What STATA command did the authors use to calculate the concentration index? It would be worthwhile mentioning it to the reader.

Results

Decomposition of fertility preference across the residence

1. “More than half (40.9%) of variations in high fertility preference between rural and urban residents were explained by the difference in composition (endowments) and the remaining differences (59.1%) were attributed to the difference in the effect of each variable for urban and rural residences (coefficients)”. The term “more than half” should be revised as 40.9% is not comparable with that.

Concentration curve and index

1. It’s good reporting the values of concentration index with its standard error. It would be also great to incorporate the 95% confidence interval of the concentration index.

Conclusions

1. See the comment above in the abstract section related to the recommendations.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer one comments.docx

Residential and wealth-related disparities of high fertility preferences in Ethiopia: a decomposition analysis

PONE-D-23-22238R1

Dear Dr. Alemu%,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Abay W. Tadesse

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The revision is well done and the revised document is looking good. It is better to focuse on residential and wealth-related inequalities in all the sections of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. My previous comments have been well addressed and I recommend for the publication of this manuscript.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Yihalem Abebe Belay

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