Worldwide Changes in Unintended Pregnancies

Judith C. Koops , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)-KNAW/University Of Groningen

The majority of research on the topic of unintended pregnancies is conducted in countries with high fertility levels. This is for good reasons, because in these countries access to modern contraceptives could still be improved, in particular for certain groups of women. Moreover, the implicit assumptions seems to be that once overall access to modern contraceptives has been achieved, unintended pregnancies will reduce to a level that does not warrant attention from researchers or policy makers. However, the few studies that have been conducted in Europe show that even in countries like Sweden and Denmark – where the majority of adults use modern contraceptives and few restriction exist on abortions – 25% of pregnancies are unintended. In fact, some argue that the proportion of unintended pregnancies can be higher in low fertility countries, because the wish for a lower total number of children increases the length of time at risk for an unintended pregnancy. In this study I answer the question: Is the reduction in number of births accompanied by a similar reduction in the proportion of unintended pregnancies? To answer this question I combine information about the Total Fertility Rate from the World Bank with information of the percentage of unintended pregnancies from the World Fertility Surveys (1970-1980), Demographic Health Surveys (1990-now), Family and Fertility Surveys (1990), and the Generations and Gender Survey (2000-now). Preliminary results suggest that percentage of unintended pregnancies does follow an inverted u-shaped pattern while fertility rates decline.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course