Trends in Contraceptive Use Worldwide 2015

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

• Publisher: United Nations
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9789213619780
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Comprehensive and timely estimates on global trends in family planning are critical for assessing current and future contraceptive demand and setting policy priorities to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and the realization of reproductive rights. This report presents a concise, descriptive analysis of levels and trends in key family planning indicators from Model-based Estimates and Projections of Family Planning Indicators 2015 and the data set World Contraceptive Use 2015, representing 195 countries or areas. The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat provides regular updates of the estimates and projections of family planning indicators as part of its contribution to global monitoring of progress on internationally-agreed targets to achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health.

ANNEX I

Estimates of the use of specific contraceptive methods among married or in-union women aged 15 to 49 in 1994 and 2015

Survey data on the distribution of contraceptive users by method from surveys covering nationallyrepresentative samples of married or in-union women of reproductive age were used to produce estimates of the prevalence of specific methods in 1994 and 2015. Methods were classified into nine modern method categories (female sterilization, male sterilization, the pill, injectables, implants, intra-uterine devices (IUD), male condom, vaginal barrier methods and other modern methods) and three traditional or natural method categories (rhythm, withdrawal and other traditional or natural methods) to ensure comparability across countries and time. Vaginal barrier methods include diaphragms, cervical caps and spermicidal foams, gels, creams and sponges. Other modern methods include emergency contraception, female condoms and modern methods not reported separately. Other traditional or natural methods include lactational amenorrhoea method (LAM), prolonged abstinence, breastfeeding and douching. Folk methods are included in the latter category when reported in survey data. Categorization is mutually exclusive with more effective methods receiving priority when more than one method is reported. Detailed data and information are publicly available in an online data set (United Nations, 2015b).

The labels “modern” and “traditional” or “natural” are used here for convenience, although the terms are imprecise. The condom, in particular, has a long history of use, although modern condoms offer significant improvements in manufacture and acceptability. With regard to traditional methods, some of the more refined rules for observing periodic abstinence were developed relatively recently. Likewise, although breast-feeding is an ancient practice, the codification of the criteria for the lactational amenorrhea method of contraception (LAM) received international recognition only in the late 1980s in the “Bellagio Consensus” (Kennedy, Rivera and McNeilly, 1989).

Data since 2000 on the mix of contraceptive methods used are available for 163 countries or areas, and the most recent survey data from this time period were used to generate estimates of method-specific prevalence in 2015. Survey data from the time period 1985 to 1999 were used to generate estimates for 1994, resulting in 159 countries or areas with relevant data on method-specific prevalence. The surveybased observations on the distribution of contraceptive users by method were applied to the model-based estimates of modern and traditional contraceptive prevalence in 1994 and 2015.

If there were missing data on specific methods in a survey, then information from a different survey in the country within plus or minus 10 years of the reference survey year were used to allocate prevalence in the “other modern methods” or “other traditional methods” categories to the missing method categories. If there were no other relevant survey data in the country from which to draw, then the regional method-specific prevalence was used to allocate prevalence in the “other modern methods” or “other traditional methods” categories to the missing method categories. In three countries the estimates of method-specific prevalence do not sum exactly to the estimate of total prevalence because the relevant survey data observation showed no use of traditional methods while the model-based estimates for 1994 or 2015 showed a non-zero but small level of traditional method use. These three cases and the resulting differences between the estimated contraceptive prevalence of any method and the sum of methodspecific prevalence estimates are: Bhutan in 1994 (0.6 percentage point difference), N...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• KEY FINDINGS
• WHY DO TRENDS IN CONTRACEPTIVE USE MATTER?
• DATA
• CONTRACEPTIVE USE AND DEMAND FOR FAMILY PLANNING IN 2015
• LONG-TERM TRENDS SINCE 1970
• THE WAY AHEAD: PROJECTIONS TO 2030
• TRENDS IN SPECIFIC CONTRACEPTIVE METHODS
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES
• ANNEX I: Estimates of the use of specific contraceptive methods among married or in-union women aged 15 to 49 in 1994 and 2015