Lifecycle Contraceptive Choice in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Understanding how and why women use contraceptives is essential to understanding the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world where high fertility may impede development. However, there has been little examination of African women's lifecycle contraceptive demand. In this descriptive paper, we examine several facets of African women's lifecycle contraceptive demand including: (1) how contraceptive use varies with age; (2) how the probability of stopping contraceptive spells varies with age and method; (3) how use of different methods is affected by marriage and parity; (4) how use of different contraceptive methods relates to use of traditional methods of fertility control at different ages; and (5) how the reasons women provide for terminating contraceptive spells vary by method used and age. To assess these aspects of contraceptive behavior, we estimate individual fixed effects regressions on a unique monthly frequency retrospective panel dataset we create from all available contraceptive calendars collected by the Demographic and Health Surveys in sub-Saharan Africa. We find a collection of results consistent with women using injectables and pills primarily to space births when aged 25-40, using implants and female sterilizations primarily to limit births when aged 40-49, and using condoms primarily when unmarried and having less frequent sex than married counterparts. Together, our results suggest that women's lifecycle contraceptive demand is driven by different fertility needs at different ages of their fertile life.