Table 1

Inequality in the proportion of women aged 15–49 years who have their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods by indicator, region and subgroup, 2017

	Relative measure (unweighted pairwise ratio)				Absolute measure (unweighted average absolute mean difference from highest subgroup category)				Population impact measure (number of additional modern contraceptive users if all were like the highest subgroup category (000 s))
	Age	Wealth	Residence	Parity	Age	Wealth	Residence	Parity	Age	Wealth	Residence	Parity
Africa
Eastern Africa	1.51	1.29	1.21	1.26	0.10	0.09	0.12	0.12	2065	2897	3474	570
Middle Africa	1.19	2.53	1.96	1.68	0.06	0.14	0.18	0.17	570	1250	1197	1722
Western Africa	1.24	2.31	1.53	1.39	0.04	0.20	0.16	0.14	593	3965	2473	3240
Northern Africa	1.84	1.06	1.04	2.19	0.13	0.02	0.03	0.39	412	359	327	294
Asia
South Asia	2.20	1.15	1.03	2.08	0.29	0.03	0.02	0.38	22 188	5787	3668	3685
Southeast Asia	1.34	1.09	1.05	1.61	0.10	0.03	0.03	0.28	2365	2063	1133	866
Western Asia	1.69	1.37	1.25	1.70	0.11	0.10	0.11	0.22	454	1423	637	249
Latin America and the Caribbean
Caribbean	1.30	1.07	1.17	1.16	0.13	0.03	0.11	0.10	343	111	198	112
Central America	1.69	1.07	1.04	1.58	0.19	0.03	0.03	0.29	2155	564	228	864
South America	1.27	1.19	1.09	1.11	0.09	0.07	0.07	0.08	1963	2701	685	1250

Highlighted cells indicate the subgroup with the highest inequality within a region for each measure of inequality used. Subgroup categories are as follows: age (15–19, 20–24, 25–34 and 35–49 years), household wealth (five quintiles), residence (rural or urban) and parity (0 births or one or more births).