The influence of husband's opinion on the contraceptive use of women in Nepal

Nashid Kamal, Independent University, Bangladesh
Cindy Lim, University College London

This study investigates the influence of `husband’s opinion of family planning’ on the current and future use of modern contraception of couples in Nepal, net of other confounders. Using the Nepal DHS (2006) it constructs two logistic regression models, one for users of sterilization and the other for users of modern reversible methods. Continuous explanatory variables are tested for nonlinearity and linear splines are fitted in both models emphasizing the use of the right functional form. Results show that `husband’s opinion of family planning’ is the most significant predictor of use of modern reversible methods, while `number of living sons’ have higher predictive power for the sterilization model. For those intending to use in future, husband’s positive opinion of FP, results in five times higher use. Women in the worst socio-economic quintiles have higher probability of future use. Gender equity and poor couples are the future challenges in Nepal.