Reproductive Health Equity: Demystifying Unmet Need for Family Planning among Young Women in Uttar Pradesh

Punit Mishra, PopulationCouncil Consulting
Minakshi Buragohain, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)

Unmet need for contraception in adolescent women in India is a public health concern which leads to unintended pregnancies or abortions. This paper aims to understand the significant changes in unmet need in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh with unmet need among adolescents at 19 percent. A consistent decline in adolescent fertility and significant but high decline in unmet need asks for an in-depth examination. The study is based on 11,018 adolescent women from the recent round of India’s DHS, NFHS-5 (2019-21). To fulfil the study’s objective, Multilevel logit model and Oaxaca Blinder Decomposition was applied. The Multilevel logit model suggests statistically significant variations at community and district level, implying a strong presence of unobserved factors affecting the unmet demand. Oaxaca decomposition results show that difference in rural and urban adolescent unmet need in explained by factors like wealth, religion and intra-state regions. The results call for the need to implement culturally appropriate reproductive and sexual health literacy programs to increase access to modern contraception and to raise women’s autonomy in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Keywords: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Family Planning and Contraception, Children, Adolescents, and Youth

See paper.