Increased Contraceptive Prevalence or Population Growth? Decomposing the Gains in the Number of Women Using Modern Contraceptive Methods between 2000 and 2030

Vladimira Kantorova, United Nations
Aisha Dasgupta, UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
Mark Wheldon, United Nations Population Division

Globally, the number of women of reproductive age using modern contraception increased from 660 million to 842 million between 2000 and 2019 and is projected to increase to 918 million in 2030. Underlying this increase are changes in contraceptive behaviour and population dynamics. This paper explains how much of the increase was and will be attributable to actual changes in the prevalence of modern contraceptive and to compositional changes in country populations related to population growth and changes in marital status proportions. At the global level, we find that population growth accounted for 80 million (44%) of the increase of 182 million women using modern contraception between 2000 and 2019, 66 million (36%) due to changes in the prevalence rate among married/in-union women and 35 million (19%) due to changes in the prevalence rate among unmarried/not-in-union women. The impact of the components is compared over time and across countries.