A study of the trend and correlates of unintended pregnancies in Odisha, India

The poor reproductive health among women is the outcome of prevailing unintended fertility due to lack of family planning practices at the time of need. The present study aims to address this issue in the State of Odisha, India. Odisha with strong concentration of tribal population has moderate fertility but very high infant, child and maternal mortality in India. The paper examines the variation in unmet need among women of the said population. It uses data from three rounds of India’s the National Family Survey (NFHS-1, NFHS-2 & NFHS-3). Multinomial logistic regression (m-log) models and GIS have been used to analyze the data. The study reveals that the programme should look into the unmet need of women who are young, lower parity, illiterate, non-working, lower standard of living and poor inter-spouse communication about family planning in order to address the unmet need for family planning, maternal and child health among the population.