Factors associated with unmet need for family planning among currently married and sexually active unmarried women (15-49 years) in Uganda UDHS Data

Abstract

Globally, more than one in ten women in-union have an unmet need for family planning; that is to say, they affirm that they want to stop or delay childbearing but are not using any method of contraception to prevent pregnancy. In Uganda, as of 2016 UDHS, 28% of the women in union had unmet need for Family Planning. Therefore, this study assessed factors that are associated with unmet need for family planning in Uganda using 2016 UDHS data. On average women that were considered for the study were aged 30 years. Majority of the women were residing in rural areas (77%), had attained only primary education (60%), were married or living with their partner (81%). There was no much variation between all the wealth index categories where each at least had 19% of the women. a slightly higher percentage (45%) had one to three children. On the aspect of unmet need for family planning, 42% of the women had unmet need for family planning where 28% and 14% had unmet need for spacing and limiting respectively. Chi-square results showed that age, place of residence, education level, marital status, wealth index and number of living children was significantly associated with unmet need for family planning. At further analysis, binary logistic regression results showed that age, education level, marital status and wealth index were significantly associated with unmet need for family planning. A unit increase in age of the women reduced the odds of having unmet need for family planning by 0.969. Women that had attained at least primary education had less odds of having unmet need for family planning as compared to women that did not attain any formal education. Married women or those living with their partners were more likely to have unmet need for family planning as compared to women that had never been married. Women from non-poorest families were less likely to have unmet need for family planning as compared to those from poorest families. The researcher recommends government and other stakeholders like NGOs to increase on the support for family planning especially to women in poor families in order to meet their need for family planning. There is also a need to educate women especially those that did not attain higher levels of education about the usefulness of family planning and how to access family planning methods in order to reduce on their unmet need. More so, there is need for further study specifically on the factors associated with unmet need for family planning among teenage women that is those aged 15 to 19 years