Assessing differentials in modern contraceptive use among women in Uganda between 2000/1 and 2011: An application of the logit-based decomposition

Abstract

The objective of the study was to assess differentials in modern contraceptive use among sexually active women (15-49) in the period 2000/1-2011. The gap in modern contraceptive use was decomposed into components attributed to differences in characteristics of women and differences in effects of the predictors in two phases namely 2000/1-2006 and 2006-2011. The assessment was based on samples derived from 2000/1, 2006 and 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey data consisting of 4905, 5513 and 5633 records, respectively. Analysis was done using frequency distributions and nonlinear Oaxaca-blinder decomposition of the logistic regression. In the results, rates in modern contraceptive use increased from 23.3% in 2000/1 to 31.0% in 2011. Overall, differentials in modern contraceptive use were attributed to the compositional variations in the characteristics of women and variations in effect of the predictors between 2006 and 2011 (p<0.01). Compositional variations of women accounted for 34.0% of the overall gap in modern contraceptive use among women between 2006 and 2011. The compositional variations in the study period were significantly noted in the variables namely type of residence, education level, number of living children and exposure to media FP messages (p<0.05). The variables contributed 3.6%, 17.1%, -0.7% and 9.2% to the gap in contraceptive use between 2006 and 2011, respectively. In relation to effects, 66.0% of the overall gap was accounted for by variations in the effects of the predictors. Variations in effect of wealth quintile contributed 18.0% to the gap in modern contraceptive use (p<0.05).Worth noting is that the overall gap in modern contraceptive use among women was not significant between 2000/1 and 2006 (p>0.05). In light of the findings, future efforts for enhancing utilization of modern contraceptive methods in the country should focus on promoting universal education, publicity of family planning programs and improved child health care. However, additional research is needed to assess the contribution of supply side factors that would have been also important to this study.