Socio-economic Differentials in Contraceptive Discontinuation in India

Though the contraceptive use in India has increased over time, the use of modern spacing
method remained low across socio-economic groups. The low use of spacing method may lead to
high infant mortality and increased maternal and child morbidities. This paper studies the factors
associated with contraceptive discontinuation with an emphasis on the socio-economic
differentials.
Utilizing the calendar data of National Family Health Survey (2005-06), a multiple decrement
life table approach revealed that about 40% of all modern spacing method users stop use within
12 months of initiating. The most likely stoppers were pill users (49%) followed by condom
users (44%). IUD users are the least likely to stop with 81% persisted to use the method after one
year. The main reason for discontinuation varied from the reasons like side-effects for pill and
IUD to method failure in case of traditional methods. Three types of discontinuations: failure,
switching and abandoned at the risk of pregnancy were analyzed. The multilevel multivariate
analysis suggests that the contraceptive method used, experience with the immediate previous
method, age, wealth status and parity of women were found to influence the discontinuation behavior.
A large amount of unexplained variation in discontinuation rates remains at the community level.