Comparative Study of the Determinants of Contraceptive Use in Urban and Rural Areas of Ilam District

Fereshteh Norouzi, Abbas Askari Nodoushan, Hatam Hosseini

Abstract

Parallel to reduction in women’s childbearing desires and ideals, demand for using contraceptive methods increase. This paper aims to study of the prevalence of contraceptive use and its determinants among currently married women aged 15-49 living in urban and rural areas of Ilam district. Data are taken from a survey conducted on a sample of over 724 households in July 2014. The sampling method is a combination of multi-stage cluster sampling, random sampling and systematic random sampling methods. Results show that contraceptive use is widespread among women in rural and urban area. 81.8 percent of women in both rural and urban area use a contraceptive method. The use of modern contraceptive methods are more common among urban women than their counterparts in rural area (75.7 percent vs 70.7 percent). Multivariate analysis show that the number of children surviving and costs of contraception (18.8 percent), and the ideal number of children, the number of children surviving, and the costs of contraception (36.7 percent) are the main determinants of women’s risk of contraceptive use in urban and rural area respectively. According to findings it is reasonable to conclude that regarding widespread use of contraceptives and decreasing women’s childbearing desires and ideals, increasing costs of access to contraceptives and sociocultural costs of contraceptive use may lead to unintended pregnancies, induced abortion and maternal health threats. Journal of Woman and Family Studies, 2017, 5(2), PP.193-220. Click here to get the paper.

The End of High Fertility is Near

United Nations Population Division

In recent decades, developing countries around the world have been undergoing a demographic transition, characterized by increasing levels of life expectancy at birth and declining levels of lifetime fertility.  Many of these countries are now reaching levels of mortality and fertility that are similar to those seen in the more developed countries. The total fertility rate for the world as a whole fell from around 5 live births per woman in 1950-1955 to 2.5 births in 2010-2015. As a result of this global transition, an increasing share of the world’s population now lives in countries where total fertility has fallen below the replacement level of approximately 2.1 live births per woman over a lifetime; at this level of fertility, each generation of parents exactly replaces itself with an equivalent number of children who survive to adulthood, ensuring a long-term growth rate of zero¹. Conversely, a relatively small proportion of the world’s population now lives in countries with high levels of fertility — conventionally defined as more than 5 live births per woman. Given the projected future course of fertility, it is expected that this proportion will continue to decrease. Thus, the end of high fertility is near and should become a reality within the next decade or so, according to the results of the 2017 Revision of the World Population Prospects².