Socio-economic factors and contraceptive use in West Kalimantan

Abstract

Very few studies about family planning have been carried out in West Kalimantan. The studies which have been conducted are mostly concerned with the Chinese, one of the major ethnic groups in this province. This might be because West Kalimantan is one province of Indonesia which has a high proportion of Chinese, and the Chinese group is still regarded as a sensitive issue in Indonesia. This study uses 1980 census data to analyse socio-economic variables including ethnicity in terms of their relationship with contraceptive use. The findings indicate a conventional relationship between the socio-economic factors - place of residence, education, occupation and living standard - and contraceptive use: the better the socio-economic conditions of the women, the higher the contraceptive use. The findings also suggest that the Government should consider a special approach to the Chinese community, since their level of contraceptive use is low compared with the other ethnic groups. Detailed discussions of the extent of the program implementation and its challenges show that the program in West Kalimantan is still based more on the clinic approach than the community approach. This might have led to the relatively low contraceptive prevalence in West Kalimantan and the concentration of contraceptive use among the women with better socio-economic conditions evident in 1980.