The impact of family planning supply factors on unmet need in rural Egypt 1988-1989

This paper examines the reasons for the high level of unmet need for contra ception in rural Egypt, using data from the individual survey and service a vailability module of the 1988-89 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey. Two broad sets of potential factors are considered: characteristics of a woman which influence her desire for children and thus her propensity to use cont raception, and factors relating to the family planning service environment in which she lives. The results from a multivariate analysis show that cert ain individual characteristics, such as family composition and education, h ave a strong impact on the level of contraceptive use and on the proportion of total demand for spacing or limiting childbearing that is met by use of family planning. Unmet need, however, remains fairly constant across demog raphic and socioeconomic subgroups of the population. The largest Variation s in unmet need are regional, but elements of the family planning services, namely the provision of a community-based nurse who distributes family pla nning and female doctors at clinics, also play an important role.