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Article History

Received: 20 November 2024

Accepted: 30 April 2025

First Online: 20 May 2025

Declarations

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: The authors declare that they have no known competing interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

: The present investigation employed a secondary data analysis of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). DHS received approval from the ICF Institutional Review Board (IRB) ethics committee, United States, and the National Ethical Review Committees in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Before participation, each participant provided informed consent, and all information was collected confidentially. MEASURE DHS granted us formal authorization and raw survey data for utilization. The dataset remained confidential and was not shared nor provided to any other entity. This study is not an experiment. All procedures were executed in accordance with the Helsinki declarations. Additional information concerning DHS data and ethical standards can be found online at ().