Family Planning Performance in 113 Countries Using a New Composite Performance Index

In this paper we measure family planning performance in 113 countries of the world using a composite performance index that takes into account both the met demand for family planning and the composition of the met demand. The composite performance index used in the present paper is an improvement over the existing approaches of measuring family planning performance. The analysis reveals that family planning performance varies widely across countries and it remains either poor or very poor in more than 40 per cent countries. There is no country where the performance is very high. Moreover, there are many countries where the family planning performance appears to have deteriorated over time. There are only a few countries where family planning performance has improved in recent years. The analysis calls for increased investment in family planning to meet the target set under the Sustainable Development Goals.