10 sampling unit were drawn, respectively.<sup>5</sup> In the following, all analyses account for the survey design and population weights are used as recommended by the data providers.

In every selected household, all women of age 15-49 years who were either usual household members or who were present in the household on the night before the interview were eligible for interviewing. In half of all selected households, an additional questionnaire was administered to survey all men aged 15-59 years about their health status. The questionnaire design remained broadly similar across the survey waves. Still, both the number of variables and the sample size increased over time with about 6,500, 10,600 and 11,300 prime age women included in the 1992, 2000 and 2005 survey, respectively.

The RDHS include detailed information on women’s birth histories (permitting the calculation of a fertility indicator to be used as the dependent variable below), maternal and child health, marital history, access to health services, domestic violence, sibling mortality, and women’s socio-economic characteristics, including schooling and main occupation. In contrast to LSMS-type household-surveys, the information captured on the characteristics of other household members and respondents’ partners is limited to age, schooling, and occupation (the latter is only available for current partners). Data on community characteristics were not collected. Due to confidentiality policies we only know the province in which a respondent currently resides, but not the administrative unit below the province level. This prevents us from merging the RDHS data with secondary data on geographical conflict intensity.

Moreover, no information on income or consumption expenditure is recorded and households’ physical asset endowments, such as owning a radio or the quality of roofing materials, is the only implicit measure available on household wealth. Instead, we construct a wealth index based on recorded household assets. Components of the index include durables, such as radio and bicycle, source of drinking water, characteristics of floor materials, and type of toilet facility. While the 2000 and 2005 surveys record a larger number of assets than the 1992

> 5 This description of the sample design refers to the 2005 RDHS, with slightly different designs used in the two previous RDHS waves. The 1992 RDHS builds on the 1991 Census as a sampling frame. At the time of the 1992 survey collection, a civil war was ongoing, with most actions of warfare taking place along the Ugandan-Rwandan border. Due to security concerns, 44 rural sectors in the provinces of Byumba and Ruhengeri in northern Rwanda were excluded from the sample frame at the outset. The 2000 RDHS builds on the listing of enumeration areas outlined for another household survey, the _Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages_ (EICV) collected in 2000, as no other population records were available at the time. The sampling frame of the EICV itself is based on the pre-genocide Census of 1991. Three strata were used – Kigali, other urban areas, rural areas – and rural areas were further stratified into provinces, resulting in 13 strata (Ministère des Finances et la Planification Economique 2003). The sample design of the 2000 RDHS is only representative of rural areas of each province and Kigali City.