Marriage, Cohabitation, and Family Planning Patterns in Ethiopia

Meghan Gallagher, Johns Hopkins University
Mary Elizabeth Hughes, Johns Hopkins University

Ethiopia has seen great success in its family planning program over the past twenty years and are a model for their region. However, contraceptive prevalence does not yet match that of more developed countries. If Ethiopia is going to achieve the benefits of a demographic dividend, it must target potential family planning users that are harder to reach. Using data from the 2010 Family Health and Wealth study in Ethiopia, we find that contraceptive patterns among married and cohabiting couples differ over time. This bears future elaboration of analysis by incorporating couple data and further testing for interactions between relationship attributes and family planning use.