Factors Affecting Modern Contraceptive Use among Women in Uganda

Abstract

Access to modern contraceptive services has been found to avert unintended pregnancy, reduce maternal and child mortality. However, use of modern methods remains low. Hence the objective of this study was to assess the factors influencing modern contraceptive use among women in Uganda. The study used the UDHS 2016 data set of women aged 15-49 years who are using any method to control conceiving or to prevent pregnancy. The study reveals that of the women who use any method, majority of them use modern contraceptives constituting to 87.2% of the total women using any method. The study assessed a number of factors that influence modern contraceptive use among women in Uganda. These are age, level of education, marital status, region, residence, religion, number of children ever born, occupation and the household wealth index. In the bivariate analysis most of the variables were statistically significant apart from religion, occupation and region whose p-value was greater than 0.05. Furthermore in the regression analysis only age (p =0.000), level of education (p=0.000), marital status (p=0.000) and wealth index (p=0.000) were significant with modern contraceptive use. Therefore the study informs government and other policy makers to focus on age, marital status and increase the disposable income of women in Uganda in order to reduce high fertility levels in line with the use of modern contraceptive use.