Unmet Need of Contraception in India: Comparison between Youths and Non-youths

Unmet need has been studied by various researchers and discussed extensively. However, there is dearth of studies, which address the issue of unmet need for contraception among the youth (15-24 years) women and compared it with the older women (25-49 years). The overall objective of this study is to address the issue of unmet need of family planning. Specifically, this study aims to focus the unmet need of family planning among the women of age group 15-25 years and compare the findings with the women of age group 25-49 years. The study also examines the key determinants of unmet need of family planning in India. National level data from third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted during 2005-2007 has been used for the analysis purpose. This survey provides information on various issues including awareness about family planning, contraceptive use, unmet need to use for family planning methods. Women of 15-24 years total unmet need is 22.8 percent in comparison to the women of age group 25-49 years ( 9.4 percent). Among youth women the unmet need for spacing methods is 17.8 percent and for limiting methods 5.0 percent. One can infer from the levels of unmet need that youth women of the country would like to delay their next pregnancy but not able to use any spacing method of family planning.