Differential Unmet Need for Family Planning: A Study of Uttar Pradesh, India

Unmet need for family planning has been the major impediment in regulating fertility in developing countries. Unmet need arises out of knowledge, awareness about availability, accessibility and affordability of family planning methods for spacing and for limiting. The present study has concentrated on the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh state of India. Data has been taken from the District Level Household Survey (2005). Correspondence analysis has been used to see the unmet need for spacing and limiting methods of family planning. Some districts in the central part of Uttar Pradesh have greater need for family planning. Certain developed districts too have unmet need for spacing methods of family planning. Two districts had lowest unmet need for spacing Kanpur Nagar (3.11), Gautam Buddha Nagar (4.45). These two districts are well developed. There are two peaks of unmet need for spacing in the state one group Shahjahanpur, Kheri, Sitapur and Hardoi and the other Sultanpur, Bahraich, Sharwasti, Balarampur, Gonda and Siddarthanagar. The state as a whole has a low unmet need (10.07 per cent) for spacing methods of family planning. On the other hand around one-fifth (20.64 per cent) state has an unmet need for limiting methods. Some of the districts like, Jhansi (7.31), Varanasi (8.8) and Sonbhadra (9.7) have lowest unmet need for limiting the family size. On the other hand nine districts like, Fatehpur (25.48), Hardoi (26.25), Auraiya (26.35), Balrampur (26.55), Etawah (27.08), Agra (28.63), Etah (29.5), Budaun (31.23), Ferozabad (33.49) have highest unmet need for limiting. Gautam Buddha Nagar was one of the districts with low unmet need (14.89 per cent) for limiting methods along with spacing method (4.45 per cent) while Kanpur too has low (17.44) unmet need for limiting. Varanasi district has low unmet need for spacing (8.8) as well as limiting methods (8.96) of family planning. Jhansi district too has low unmet need (5.21) for spacing as well as for limiting (7.31) methods. The other districts were Sonbhadra (spacing 8.47 and limiting 9.7), Jalaun (spacing 5.04, limiting 11.46). The discussion was based on the development of districts (wealth index) in relation to spacing and limiting methods of family planning. Well developed districts had unmet need concentrated at rich level while it was concentrated at low level of wealth index with undeveloped districts.