Background: Contraceptive use prevents unintended pregnancies, abortion and deaths related to
pregnancy and childbirth. The concept of unmet need is the gap between women's reproductive intentions
and their contraceptive behavior. The main objective of this report is to show the level of unmet need for
family planning over the period from 2000 to 2011. A recently developed algorithm for measuring unmet
need has been used to get a consistent measure over the years.
Method: Data was used from the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys (EDHS) conducted in
2000, 2005, and 2011. Data concerning a total of 29,142 currently married women, aged 15-49, was
considered in the analysis. The data from all EDHS was collated so as to follow the trends throughout the
period considered for the survey. Descriptive analysis was used to examine the trends and multinomial
logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with unmet need for both spacing and limiting.
The results are reported in terms of relative risk ratio (RRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). The
statistical significance was assessed if the p-value was less than 0.05.
Results: The analysis shows that unmet need for family planning has decreased over time as
contraceptive use has risen. From 2000 to 2011, the unmet need for family planning declined by 10.3
absolute percentage points, from 36.6 percent in 2000 to 26.3 percent in 2011. The results show that there
was 38 percent decline in unmet need for limiting and a 21 percent decline in unmet need for spacing. The
prevalence of contraceptive use increased substantially from 8 percent in 2000 to nearly 30 percent in
2011. Demand satisfied increased around three-fold from 18 percent from 2000 to 52 percent in 2011.
The multivariate analysis indicates that women in rural areas show high levels of unmet need compared
with women in urban areas. Among currently married women, DHS survey year, number of living
children, women’s current age, age at first marriage, education level, religious affiliation, media exposure
to family planning messages, wealth index and residence were significantly predicators of unmet need
both to limit and space birth. Partner’s education and the fact of whether a family planning worker had
visited in the last 12 months were predictors of unmet need for spacing only. A visit to a health facility in
the last 12 months preceding the survey and current working status were not independent predictors of
unmet need in the case of both limiting and spacing.