Wealth index, empowerment and modern contraceptive use among married women in Nigeria: are they interrelated?

Nigeria, a patriarchal society, is one of the more impoverished countries of the world and while its fertility and population growth rates are high, its modern contraceptive (MC) prevalence rate is low. The wealth status and decision-making power of a woman have implications on their use of MC. Studies that examined the relationship between women’s empowerment, wealth index and MC use in Nigeria are scarce.

A national representative cross-sectional data on women of reproductive age (n  = 5,098) was used. Data were analysed using Chi-square and interactive logistic regression models (α = 0.05).

Mean age of the women was 32.9(σ = 8.0) and 23.8 % were currently using MC. Current use of MC was found to be higher among the following: Yoruba (48.5 %) than Igbo (27.3 %) and Hausa women (2.9 %); highly (36.9 %) than poorly empowered women (12.1 %); upper class (35.0 %) than lower class (5.9 %); and Christians (35.5 %) than Muslims (12.6 %; p < 0.001). Injectables and condoms were the most reported MC method currently used. In the interactive model, being in lower class and poorly empowered inhibits current use of MC. The predictors of current use of MC when wealth index and women empowerment were used either jointly or interactively in the controlled regression equation were wealth index, region, education, religion, ethnicity, family planning information access on media, receiving family planning information at health facility and living children sex composition.

Modern contraceptive prevalence rate among Nigerian women was low particularly among the lower class and poorly empowered. Strategies to improve the use of MC should target women in the lower class in Nigeria.