Factors affecting the use of contraception in urban areas of Indonesia.

Analysis of a cross-sectional data sample from the 1983 Indonesian Contraceptive Prevalence Survey (ICPS) for urban areas shows that the overall current users of contraception vary from 40% to 64% and that the popular mathods of the pill IUD condom or injection are used by more than 1/2 of the eligible women. Women who have more children are more likely to use contraception. It was revealed that urban women have no obvious preference for sons as expressed through contraceptive behavior while data strongly support the hypothesis of a positive association between education and contraceptive use. There is no clear pattern of association between contraceptive use and wifes employment status. Women who experienced a childs death are only slightly less likely to use contraception. As hypothesized exposure to mass media has a strong influence on contraceptive use but it should be noted that the strength of the relationship drops substantially when other variables are controlled in multivariate analysis.