Trends and predictors of change of unmet need for family planning among reproductive age women in Ethiopia, based on Ethiopian demographic and health surveys from 2005-2016: Multivariable decomposition analysis.

Background: By spacing births and preventing unintended pregnancies, family planning is a crucial technique strategy for controlling the fast expansion of the human population. It also improves maternal and child health. women who are thought to be sexually active but who do not use modern contraception methods, who either do not want to have any more children (Limiting) or who want to delay having children for at least two years are considered to have an unmet need for family planning (Spacing).

Objective: This study carried out to determine which socio-demographic factors are the key contributors to the discrepancies in the unmet need for family planning among women of reproductive age between surveys years 2005 and 2016.

Methods: The data for this study arrived from the Ethiopia Demographic Health Surveys in 2005, 2011, and 2016 to investigate trends and Predictors of change of unmet need for family planning among reproductive age women in Ethiopia. Pooled weighted sample of 26,230 (7761 in 2005, 9136 in 2011 and 9,333 in 2016 Ethiopian demographic health surveys) reproductive-age women were used for this study. For the overall trend (2005-2016) multivariable decomposition analysis for non-linear response outcome was calibrated to identify the factors that contributed to the change of unmet need for family planning. The Logit based multivariable decomposition analysis utilizes the output from the logistic regression model to assign the observed change in unmet need for family planning over time into two components. Stata version 16.0 was used to analyze the data.

Result: The percentage of Ethiopian women of reproductive age who still lack access (unmet need) for family planning declined from 39.6% in 2005 to 23.6 percent in 2016. The decomposition analysis revealed that the change of unmet need for family planning was due to change in characteristics and coefficients. The difference in coefficients accounted for around nine out of 10 variations in unmet family planning need. Education level, birth order, and desired number of children were all factors that changed over the course of the last 11 years in relation to the unmet need for family planning.

Conclusion: Between 2005 and 2016, there were remarkable changes in unmet need for family planning. Women with birth orders of five and up, women with secondary education, and women who wanted fewer children overall were the main causes of the change in unmet need for family planning.