Desired Family Size and Contraceptive Use: An 11-Country Comparison

A Note on Desired Family Size and Contraceptive use in Rural Egypt

“…Only 2% of women who wanted more children were using contraceptives. This difference (29%) is of the same magnitude as reported for Sri Lanka and Korea, even though overall use of contraception was much lower in Egypt (Palmore & Concepcion, 1981). The percentage of the variance explained by fertility preferences, net of the other variables, was somewhat greater in rural Egypt than in the eleven-nation WFS comparison.…”

“…The same five variables used as covariates in the eleven-country comparison were also entered: wife's age, (wife's age) 2 , number of living sons, (number of living sons) 2 , and wife's age at first marriage. The squared terms were used by Palmore & Concepcion (1981) because some countries displayed a marked curvilinear trend with regard to contraceptive use, so were included here in order to maximize the comparability of results.…”

“…The 'exposed' category therefore includes all currently married women who were not pregnant, including those contraceptively sterile, plus an unknown, but most likely small, percentage of subfecund or sterile women. 'These additional calculations reflect an attempt to evaluate contraceptive use among women experiencing different levels of demographic pressure, and represent alternatives to defining all currently married women as those eligible for services provided through national family planning programs' (Palmore & Concepcion, 1981). …”

“…Most recently, Palmore & Concepcion (1981) examined the relationship between women's desires for additional children and their current use of contraceptives. Using data from the World Fertility Survey (WFS) for eleven countries, they concluded: 'Fertility preferences are related to contraceptive use; the relationship holds after multivariate statistical control for other variables; and the fertility preference measure was as closely related to contraceptive use as most of the other variables included in the analysis'.…”

Demographic and contraceptive patterns among women in northern Mindanao, the Philippines

“…About 4.0 per cent said they had discontinued use because they no longer needed contraception (e.g., menopause) and 11.0 per cent ceased contraceptive use because they became pregnant (Laing, 1977). Thus, while a considerable proportion of Filipino women reported that they did not want additional children, this desire was not implemented in terms of family planning practice, particularly the use of efficient contraception (Palmore and Concepcion, 1981;Concepcion, 1980 and contraceptive patterns of a sample of Filipino women from Northern Mindanao, the Dow and Werner (1982) typology of contraceptive and fertility behavior was utilized. Efficient contraceptive use and desired family size were cross-classified along these dimensions, resulting in the following categories: (1) moderns or the demographic and contraceptive innovators, (2) transitionals composed of the demographic but not contraceptive innovators, 1 and (3) transitionals who were contraceptive but not demographic innovators, 2 and (4) traditionals or the noninnovators.…”