Unmet need for family planning in Bangladesh :a community level analysis

Abstract

Maternal and child health is at the forefront of the development agenda nowadays worldwide. People are living longer and healthier lives, and couples are choosing to have fewer children globally. While many richer countries are concerned about low fertility and ageing, many poor nations struggle to meet the needs of rapidly growing populations. Currently in many developing countries, even the most basic health-care is unavailable to the majority of women and children leading to various other problems of underdevelopment. Family planning is one of the four pillars of improving maternal health along with antenatal care, skilled attendant delivery and access to emergency obstetric care. Unmet need for family planning has been a major concern in international population discourse for several decades. In Bangladesh unmet need for contraception marginally declined from 16.8% in 2007 to 13.5% in 2011. The Bangladesh Demographic Health survey (BDHS), 2011 is a most rationally representative sample survey of women of reproductive age 15-49.This study assesses the trend and patterns of unmet need for family planning in Bangladesh and also examines the linkages of various demographic, socio- economic, maternal(level I) and community level factors (level II) on unmet need for family planning. It assesses the effectiveness of the community level variables on unmet need for family planning by controlling the effect of other individual level factors. Surprisingly the impact of education and wealth index is marginal in determining the level of unmet need. On the other hand, three community level variables (%women exposed to family planning, %women with ideal number of children and %women with primary and higher education) significantly associated with the level of unmet need for family planning in Bangladesh.