Understanding Unmet Need for Family Planning through Background Characteristics of Women: Evidence from National Family Health Survey and District level Health Survey

The extent of unplanned pregnancy helps in understanding the amount of unmet need for family planning and fertility level. Addressing the unmet need for family planning is the priority of both population policy 2000 and SDGs. Odisha is an eastern state of India where socio-economic and demographic indicators are not good on many fronts and also complex in nature to understand but one thing is that TFR is reducing and contraceptive practices are increasing but still a significant portion of women are in the category of unmet need. In this context, it is relevant to know the unmet need groups and the background factors of women responsible for unmet need for contraception using logistic regression with the help of the NFHS and DLHS. The study found that the trend is declining but tribes and Muslims have more unmet need and economic condition and demographic factors like age and living children of women play an important role in deciding contraceptive practices but education level and mass media exposure of women have no significant role in using methods. Besides, variations in results are observed between data sets and also different geographical locations. However, after understanding the variations in results, the focus should be on individuals rather than groups in line with SDG.