The evolution of family planning in an African city: Ibadan, Nigeria

Summary Data drawn from a 1973 probability sample of 6,606 Yoruba females, 15-59 years of age in Ibadan City, Nigeria, are employed to analyse changing family planning practice over time. Usage and method rates are calculated for broad age groups from 1930 to 1973. Contraceptive practice is shown to have increased rapidly during the 1960s and early 1970s, from a very low initial base with a doubling period for the proportion of contraceptors of about four years, so that by 1973 one-sixth of the women had practised contraception and one-ninth were currently doing so. The major determinant of contraceptive practice is education. Oral contraceptives and IUDs account for an ever larger proportion of all contraception over time and together made up over 50 per cent by 1973. The Ibadan data give strong support to a suggestion emanating from scattered findings elsewhere that there is a special pattern of sub-Saharan contraceptive use: it begins with use in pre-marital and extra-marital relationships; then is increasingly employed as a substitute for post-marital sexual abstinence, and only later becomes the means for limiting the size of the family. Hence, the success of a family planning programme is indicated by rising average parity among the acceptors. Most couples in Ibadan will probably be practising contraception at some time in the 1980s, but even then such rates will probably still be low in rural areas.