Contraceptive Concordance

Overview & Synopsis

This paper proposes an indicator of contraceptive concordance that identifies the alignment between stated preferences for contraception and concurrent contraceptive behavior. The proposed indicator departs from traditional approaches to measurement in family planning that infer concordance from the alignment between women’s contraceptive (non-)use and their fertility preferences. The indicator is estimated using data from a cross-sectional survey that was conducted with 1,958 married women in rural India. More than half of the women in the sample (51.2 percent) report that they are currently using a contraceptive method. More than three in five women (60.8 percent) were classified as wanting to use a contraceptive method at the time of the survey. While 60 percent of the sample women are classified to be concordant (either wanted users or wanted non-users), almost one in four women (24.8 percent) state a preference for using contraception but are not users (unwanted non-users), and 15.2 percent of the women state a preference for not using contraception but are users (unwanted users). The paper discusses the comparative advantages and limitations of this approach relative to traditional measures and other recently developed indicators.