Abstract

Uttar Pradesh in India is high fertility state which contributes maximum to India’s population growth. The use of family planning method is amongst the lowest in the State and has witnessed a decline during the two consecutive National Family Health Survey (NFHS) period of round 3 & 4. The use of any methods of contraception declined from 56.3% in 2005-06 to 53.5 % in 2015-16. A decline of 2.8 percent points in-spite of all the programmatic push. Similarly, the use of any modern contraceptive methods declined from 48.5% to 47.8% during this period. This decline in the use of contraception necessitates revisiting determinants of contraceptive use at the district (group) level. The availability of district level data from NFHS-4 makes it possible to estimate between district variations in contraceptive use in UP. The Intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.1528 reveals that 15.28 percent of the variation in contraceptive use is due to between district differences in Uttar Pradesh while 84.72 percent variation is due to within district individual differences. At individual level younger age, higher parity, Hindu religion, educated secondary or higher school levels and those belonging to higher SES other than poor quintile have significant higher odds of contraceptive use. At district (group) level, the higher percentages of women educated higher school levels within district significantly determines the use of contraception in Uttar Pradesh.

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