Contraceptive Use Dynamics: Life Time Use

For the first time in Iran, the 2005 Iran Low Fertility Survey collected information on the full history of women's contraceptive use, that is, for every month of their life from the time that they married. These data provide important insights into the changing contraceptive behaviour of successive generations of Iranian married women. The chapter provides a parallel to Chapter 4 that examined the birth histories of women across their lifetimes. The chapter addresses such questions as what contraceptive methods were used by successive generations to stop their childbearing after they had achieved the number of children that they wanted to have, what methods were used to achieve the remarkably long intervals between the first and the second birth and what methods are being used in the emergence of a delay of the first birth within marriage. The chapter also examines to what extent factors such as place of residence, parity or level of education explain the choice of a specific method and the duration of its use at each stage of the reproductive life course.

This chapter is drawn from Hosseini-Chavoshi (2007).