Final Report (PDF, 2132K) - Measure DHS

Contraceptive use is lower among married women than all women (6 vs. 9 percent). This isprimarily due to the fact that younger married women are less likely to be using contraception than theirunmarried counterparts. While levels of use among all women generally fall with age, they first rise andthen fall among currently married women. Such a pattern implies that single women may be usingcontraception to avoid a premarital pregnancy, and that when women marry they want to start theirfamilies. It is also likely that a greater proportion of young married women are either pregnant or haverecently delivered and thus are not at risk of getting pregnant again. These issues will be investigatedfurther in later sections of this report. The pattern of use by method (Figure 4.2) is similar for marriedwomen and all women, except that married women are less likely to rely on the condom.Figure 4.2Current Use of Family Planning by MethodCurrently Married Women 15-49Not Using 94%Periodic Abstinence 2%Pill 1%Injection 1%Other 2%Ondo State DHS 1986The pattern of contraceptive use by method and by background characteristics is presented inTable 4.7 for married women. The data show that urban women are almost twice as likely (9 percent) tobe using a family planning method as rural women (5 percent), and nine times as likely as women inriverine areas (I percent). Contraceptive use is higher among educated than uneducated women; 15percent of married women with secondary education are using, compared to 6 percent of women withprimary education and 3 percent of those with no education (Figure 4.3). Religious afftliation alsoappears to influence contraceplive use with Protestant women having a higher level of use than women ofother religious affiliations. As expected, family planning use increases with the number of living childrena woman has, from less than two percent of women with no children, to seven percent of women withfour or more children.33