• Summary
• Credits

1. Focus on Men
• Scope of this Report
2. Contraceptive Use
3. Contraceptive Awareness and Approval
4. Fertility Preferences
5. Young Men

• Figures
• Tables
• Side-bars
• Bibliography

• Men overreport, and women under-report, condom use
• Why many men do not intend to use family planning
• Radio and TV messages reach more men than women
• Most men want to have more children than women do
• Sexually active young unmarried men at risk for HIV/AIDS

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Focus on Men

Surveys around the world increasingly are interviewing men and reporting on their contraceptive use, reproductive preferences, attitudes toward family planning, and sexual behavior. Before 1990 only four nationally representative surveys of men were conducted. Since 1990, 76 surveys of men in 48 countries have been conducted as part of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Reproductive Health Surveys (RHS) programs, including the Young Adult Reproductive Health Surveys (YARHS). In all but one of the 48 countries—Costa Rica¹—the men’s surveys are nationally representative. In Armenia, however, the survey covers only men’s AIDS awareness and sexual behavior.

Most nationally representative surveys of men have been conducted in sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 1). Others come from Latin America and the Caribbean. Only a handful of countries in Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia have surveyed men. Twenty countries—16 in sub-Saharan Africa—have conducted more than one national survey of men since 1990.

The increase in men’s surveys reflects widening recognition of men’s importance in sexual and reproductive health. International conferences in the 1990s formally encouraged programs to emphasize men’s shared responsibility for women’s reproductive health and to promote men’s active commitment to responsible parenthood and sexual and reproductive health (5, 18, 19, 39, 42, 43, 46). In addition, the AIDS crisis has made the need to address men in reproductive health policies and programs not only clear but also urgent (2, 11, 14).

Still, there have been far fewer surveys of men than of women. Cultural and programmatic barriers often have impeded efforts to survey men on such topics as fertility and family planning, as they have impeded men’s participation in family planning programs themselves. Some family planning programs have neglected men, assuming that men are indifferent or even opposed to family planning (14, 24). Some countries, especially those with low HIV prevalence, lack interest in surveying men, while others lack the funds to survey men (47).

This issue of Population Reports provides an overview of men’s fertility and family planning attitudes and behavior as reported in DHS, RHS, and YARHS surveys conducted since 1990. Data on HIV/AIDS awareness and behavior among both men and women is available in a companion web-based publication.

Since 1990 the DHS program has provided technical assistance to surveys of men in 39 countries.² Also, the RHS program has provided technical assistance to surveys of men in eight countries—Albania, Belize, Cape Verde, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, and Romania. In addition, the RHS program has provided technical assistance to the Young Adult Reproductive Health Surveys (YARHS) in six countries since 1990—Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mozambique, Romania, and Zimbabwe. The DHS, RHS, and YARHS all receive financial support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Most surveys in the DHS program include all men, both married and unmarried (see Appendix Table). Some countries surveyed by the DHS, however, include only husbands of surveyed women or currently or ever-married men. These include DHS surveys in the early 1990s in Cameroon, Niger, and Rwanda, and in Bangladesh, Egypt, Nepal, Pakistan, and Turkey. In all RHS, survey samples of men are independent of samples of women. The RHS never interviews both husband and wife in the same household.

This issue of Population Reports provides limited comparisons of findings from men’s and women’s surveys. Surveys of men tend to cover the same topics covered in women’s surveys. Questions address such key issues as contraceptive knowledge and use, family planning attitudes, fertility preferences, and sexual activity. Comparable data from women’s surveys can be found in Population Reports, New Survey Findings: The Reproductive Revolution Continues, Series M, Number 17, Spring 2003 (http://www.populationreports.org/m17/).

Women’s surveys have been conducted in far more countries than men’s surveys. DHS and RHS findings about women, therefore, are broadly representative of the developing regions. This cannot be said about the men’s surveys.

Furthermore, comparisons between men and women of reproductive age are not exact, as the age groups are defined differently in the surveys. In the companion report on women’s survey findings, the reproductive age group for women is defined as ages 15 to 49 or 15 to 44 in all countries. In this report on men’s surveys, however, the reproductive age limits for men vary among countries. Some countries have no upper or lower limits for men’s reproductive age, some have both upper and lower limits, and some have lower age limits but not upper limits (see Appendix Table).

The data presented here come principally from on-line DHS STATcompiler tabulations and from special tabulations that the DHS and RHS programs produced for this report. Some figures differ slightly from those in published final country reports. Differences are mainly due to additional cleaning of the data sets after publication of the final country reports. Final country report data have been used in cases where data were not available from STATcompiler. (STATcompiler data and many DHS final country reports are available at http://www.measuredhs.com/.)

Not all surveys include questions on all of the topics presented in this report, nor are the respondents defined the same way in all surveys. As a result, the number of countries reported in different sections and tables varies.

Disclaimer: The information provided on this web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.