Women’s Parity And Contraceptive Use In Ghana.

Abstract

The use of contraceptives by women has increased globally from 42% in 1990 to 49% in 2019. However, the contraceptive prevalence rate remains low at 36% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In, Ghana, several interventions including the integration of family planning services into the National Health Insurance Scheme in certain selected districts, yet data from the recent Maternal Health Survey (2017), indicate about 25% of women were using contraceptives. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between women’s parity level and contraceptive use in Ghana. The study used secondary data from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Women who were pregnant, infecund, abstaining, and sexually inactive were excluded from this study, so the sample size was reduced from 9396 to 5227. Based on the women’s dataset, the background description of the women’s characteristics was presented at the univariate level of analysis whereas the relationship between individual characteristics, socio-economic factors, and parity and contraceptive use was examined at the bivariate and multivariate levels of analysis. The results from the study indicated that 39.4% of the women had 2 to 4 children; while about 17% had 5 or more children. Moreover, the findings also revealed that 36% of the 5227 sampled women in Ghana were using contraceptives. Results from the bivariate level of the analysis indicated that the type of place of residence and household wealth index had no significant association with the use of contraceptives, while parity, age, marital status, education, ethnicity, religion, region of residence, and working status were significantly related to the use of contraceptives among women in Ghana. Also, about 27% of women with zero parity were using contraceptives while 38% of the women with parity five and above used contraceptives. At the multivariate level, results from the binary logistic regression model indicated that parity, age, education, ethnicity, marital status, and region of residence had a significant relationship with the xiii use of contraceptives. Moreover, women with some children were more likely to be using contraceptives than women with zero parity. This study makes recommendations on the education of women according to parity especially women with 5 or more children on contraceptive use. Moreover, efforts must be strengthened to increase contraceptive use across all age groups, especially adults (20 - 49), and across all education levels (especially among highly educated women).