My Body, Your Choice: Partner’s Age and Education as Determinants of Contraceptive Use in India
Abstract
Many couples in low and middle-income countries would like to limit or delay their pregnancy but they do not have sufficient access to modern contraceptive methods. Although women mostly pay for unmet needs for family planning, they are often not considered as fertility decision makers by their partners. This paper aims to explore the role played by a partner’s age and education differences in explaining contraceptive use and unmet need among married couples in India. Data were drawn from the National Family Health Survey-4 survey and a stratified two-stage sample design was adopted to reach out to the surveyed households. A total of 63,696 couples aged 15-49 years of women and men aged 15-54 years were included in the analysis. Among the married couples included in the study, husbands were older and more educated than the wives. Mean and the standard deviation of the age of married couples was 4.84±3.87 &1.44±4.25 years. Woman with more education (OR=1.31) were more likely to use contraception methods than those who had no schooling. Unmet need for family planning was lesser among the couples where the husband was older (OR=0.89) compared with the couples where both were of the same age or wife was older. With the increasing wealth quantile, the use of contraceptive methods was growing from the poorest to the richest group (OR=2.0). According to our findings, not just individuals’ but couples’ characteristics matter in determining unmet needs for family planning and use of contraception
Full Text:
PDFRefbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India License.