Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan 30:4:2.
doi: 10.1186/s40834-018-0083-8. eCollection 2019.

Prevalence and determinants of unmet need for family planning among married women in Ghana-a multinomial logistic regression analysis of the GDHS, 2014

Joseph K Wulifan  1 , Jacob Mazalale  2 , Christabel Kambala  3 , William Angko  4 , Job Asante  5 , Stephen Kpinpuo #  1 , Albino Kalolo #  6
Affiliations

Prevalence and determinants of unmet need for family planning among married women in Ghana-a multinomial logistic regression analysis of the GDHS, 2014

Joseph K Wulifan et al. Contracept Reprod Med. .

Abstract

Background: Documentary evidence points to high unmet need for family planning across sub-Saharan Africa. Modern contraceptive use has been staggering over decades with unacceptable marginal increases given that one in three women still report unmet need in Ghana. This study sought to re-examine through a further analysis on the prevalence and determinants of unmet need for family planning in Ghana using married women extracted from the recent 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey.

Method: Data was analyzed using univariate, bivariate, logistic and multinomial logistic regression models.

Results: Of the 4527 women, more than a third (35.17%) experienced unmet need of which 20.19% had unmet need for spacing while 14.98% reported unmet need for limiting. The logistic results showed that older aged women, being employed and women with higher ideal number of children were less likely to experience unmet need. However, women who did not know the couples' preferred number of children, women who had more than one union and those with higher number of living biological children were more likely to report unmet need. From the multinomial model, an increase in age, residing in a rural area, and being employed were associated with lower risk of unmet need for spacing. Additionally, Women who did not know the couples' ideal number of children, women who had higher age when they got married, and women with higher number of biological children were more likely to report unmet need for spacing. Women who had a higher number of ideal children, women who had secondary or higher education, women from higher socio-economic households, were less likely to report unmet need for limiting. .

Conclusions: We recommend the strengthening of contraception services in order to address the various age specific needs and women within the different socio-demographic sects so as to reduce unmet need. Addressing the needs of women with increasing number of living biological children is equally paramount.

Keywords: Demographic and health survey; Ghana; Limiting; Multinomial regression; Spacing; Unmet need.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethical consent to use the 2014 DHS data for further analyses on unmet need among married women was sought and approval granted by the DHS data originators (ICF Macro International and USAID). Permission and approval were duly granted to publish this manuscript.No individual details, images or video in any identifiable form are included such that consent to publish is not applicable.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

    1. Say L, Chou D, Gemmill A, Tunçalp Ö, Moller A-B, Daniels J, et al. Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis. Lancet Glob Health. 2014;2:e323–e333. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70227-X. - DOI - PubMed
    1. WHO Trends in Maternal Mortality . 1990 To 2013 - estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank and the United Nations population division. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2014.
    1. WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank, United Nations . Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2013 Estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, The World Bank and the United Nations Population Division. WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data-20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. 2014.
    1. Cleland J, Bernstein S, Ezeh A, Faundes A, Glasier A, Innis J. Family planning: the unfinished agenda. Lancet. 2006;368:1810–1827. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69480-4. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Upadhyay UD, Gipson JD, Withers M, Lewis S, Ciaraldi EJ, Fraser A, Huchko MJ, Prata N. Women's empowerment and fertility: a review of the literature. Soc Sci Med. 2014;115:111–20. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources