Determinants Of Fertility Behavior And Contraceptive Usage Among Married Women In The Productive Age: A Case Study Of Shiraz County, Iran
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Date
2016-08
Authors
Asadisarvestani, Khadijeh
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Abstract
Iran like other countries has experienced a lot of demographic changes. The
success of the Iranian family planning program as well as socioeconomic changes
has contributed towards a dramatic decline in fertility rate. As a result, Iranian policy
makers are revising population policies to improve the fertility rate. On the other
hand, although a family planning program of Iran is one of the most successful
family planning programs in the world, but it still has many unsolved problems such
as a high rate of unmet need, unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions. Hence, the
main purpose of this research was to investigate factors that affect both fertility
behavior and contraceptive usage in Shiraz County, Iran. A theoretical framework has
been designed based on demographic transition theory, demand-supply theory and
diffusion theory. The study is a quantitative research and its technique is survey.
The sample of this study was all married women in productive age (15-49) who were
living in the Shiraz County (include Shiraz City and rural areas). Data has been
collected by questionnaire from 626 women who were selected by multi cluster
sampling and purposive sampling. Data were analyzed using SPSS (version 20). The
results of this study revealed that both fertility behavior and contraceptive usage
were affected by a set of socioeconomic and cultural factors. In terms of fertility
behavior, results showed that the main predictors are the respondent’s age,
respondent’s educational level, age at the first marriage, desired number of children,
the spousal age difference, husband’s education level and contraceptive usage. With
regards to contraceptive usage, the main predictors are couple agreement on
contraception method, the number of actual birth children, women’s authority, the
knowledge and positive attitude about contraceptives and the number of desired
children. In addition, the findings confirmed that both demographic transition theory
and demand-supply theory are necessary to explain fertility behavior and
contraceptive usage but these theories are not sufficient. Diffusion of new ideas can
play an important role in change of fertility behavior and contraceptive usage in the
absence of socioeconomic and economic factors. To fill up this theoretical gap,
diffusion theory can play an important role in explaining fertility and contraceptive
usage.
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Keywords
Factors that affect both fertility behavior , and contraceptive usage in Shiraz County, Iran.