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.