Assessing regional differences in contraceptive discontinuation, failure and switching in Brazil

Table 1 Percentage distribution of women aged 15–49 according to selected background characteristics, by region, Brazil, 1996.

	Region
	North	Northeast	Southeast	South	Centre-West	National
Age group
15–19	23	21	19	17	17	20
20–24	18	17	14	13	16	15
25–29	15	16	15	15	18	15
30–34	14	14	16	16	15	15
35–39	13	13	14	15	14	14
40–44	11	10	12	14	11	12
45–49	6	9	10	10	9	9
Marital status
Married/living together	55	58	60	66	63	60
Not in union	45	42	40	34	37	40
Number of children
0	34	35	34	30	29	33
1	15	13	17	19	15	16
2	15	15	20	23	22	19
3+	36	37	29	28	34	32
Ethnicity
White	18	26	49	68	42	44
Other	82	74	51	32	58	56
Educational attainment
No schooling	4	10	3	3	7	5
Primary	27	39	30	31	32	33
Secondary	64	47	59	58	54	55
Higher	5	4	8	8	7	7
Mass media exposure
Watches TV regularly (every week)	89	81	92	92	87	89
Does not watch TV	11	19	8	8	13	11
Place of residence
Rural	3	30	11	23	16	18
Urban	97	70	89	77	84	82
Total	100	100	100	100	100	100

Source: Demographic and Health Survey (N = 12,612 women).
Note: Characteristics refer to those reported at the time of the survey. Some rural areas of the North and Centre-West regions excluded from the sampling frame.

ISSN: 1742-4755