Unmet need for family planning among women in reproductive age in Uganda UDHS data
Abstract
The study assessed unmet need for family planning among women in reproductive age in Uganda specifically looking at the association between socio-demographic factors of women, partners and households’ characteristics with unmet need for family planning using UDHS 2016 data.
A total of 7556 women aged 15 to 49 years were considered for the study, majority of the women were aged 25 to 39 years (57%), had attained only primary education (62%) and were working (81%) residing in rural areas (77%). With regard to household characteristics, most of the women had 1 to 6 children (81%), were residing in rural areas (79%) and were from non-poor households (58%). Most of the women, their partners were aged 30 to 49 years (64%), had attained only primary education (53%) and working (97%). On the aspect of awareness about family planning almost all the women (99%) knew modern family planning methods. About the use, 51% were using modern family planning methods and it was mainly a joint decision between the woman and husband. For the 44% that were not using any method, 41% the decision was mainly done by the woman and still the same percentage 42% was done jointly between the two. About the unmet need for family planning, 44% of the women had total unmet need for family planning where 28% had need family planning for spacing their children and 16% wanted family planning for limiting the number of children. At bivariate analysis, chi-square results showed that age, education level, working status of the women, number of living children, place of residence, wealth quintile religion, partner's age, education level and working status significantly influenced unmet need for family planning. These characteristics were taken for further analysis using binary logistic regression, results age, education level of woman, number of living children, wealth quintile, place of residence and working status of the partner were significantly associated with unmet need for family planning among women where by women that were aged 20 to 49 years, had attained at least primary education, with at least one child, from urban areas, poor households, Anglican and whose partners were working were less likely to have unmet need for family planning
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 and there is 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