Addressing Unmet Need for Spacing and Its Implications on Fertility: Need for Family Planning in India

Priyanka Yadav, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The research clearly indicates the huge amount of currently married women with different socioeconomic strata having unmet need in India and importantly give a strong message for achievement of replacement of fertility by satisfying the unmet need. There are large variations in unmet need for family planning among Indian states. Further, we applied Westoff and Bankole model to know the potential demographic significance of unmet need. After calculating the unmet need for family planning of India, we calculated three different models like “Maximum”, “Minimum”, “Realistic unmet need satisfied” with assumptions and then with Bongaarts Proximate Determinants Model, we have estimated figures of implied fertility rate. Study suggests, in all states the elimination of unmet need to space theoretically reduces the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to the replacement level of fertility. Results indicate that by satisfying the unmet need for spacing we are able to control fertility to a significant level.