Trends of demand satisfied by modern methods of contraceptive among women of reproductive age between 1990 and 2018 in Nigeria, using Demographic and Health Surveys: A synthetic cohort

This report analyzes the changes over time of the indicators of modern Family Planning (FP) in Nigeria. The five indicators of interest includes: modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (mCPR), need for FP, demand satisfied by modern methods, unmet need for FP and method mix.

With a synthetic cohort approach, we used five Nigeria population-representative surveys (Demographic and health surveys) from 1990-2018 to estimate several indicators of FP for women born between 1971 and 1975. For each of the five surveys, we assessed the socio-demographic characteristics of the 1971-75 cohort by level of education, marital status, parity, employment at the time of the survey, residence and religion. Afterwards, we analyzed the family planning indicators and thus charted a synthetic birth cohort of women as they age over their reproductive life-span (from 15-19 at the time of 1990 survey to 43-47 years at the time of the 2018 survey), examining how these indicators change over time.

We used the findings to identify gaps and recommended strengthening of Sexual and Reproductive Health policies in Nigeria to address those gaps.