The prevalence of unmet need for family planning is a primary justification for family planning programs, but very little research has explored the causes of unmet need. This paper proposes a framework for explaining unmet need: (i) unmet need is an artifact of inaccurate measurement of fertility preferences and/or contraceptive practice; (ii) unmet need reflects weakly held fertility preferences; (iii) women classified as having unmet need perceive themselves to be at low risk of conceiving; (iv) unmet need is due to excessive costs of contracepting, including social unacceptability of contracepting, husbands' opposition, fear of health side effects, and inadequate family planning services. The framework is applied to quantitative and qualitative data collected in 1993 from currently married women and their husbands in two provinces in the Philippines. Fertility preferences, contraceptive behavior, and the "costs of contraception" were measured in greater depth than is typical of DHS surveys. The results indicate that unmet need is not an artifact of survey measurement. The most important factors accounting for unmet need are the strength of women's reproductive preferences, the fertility preferences of the husband, and the perceived detrimental health side effects of contracepting. The importance of two other factors is specific to the type of unmet need: perceived risk of conceiving for women who wish to space their next birth, and the acceptability of family planning for those who wish to limit fertility. Inadequate family planning services appear to carry little weight; it should be stressed, however, that this study was not designed to test the potential impact of intensified and improved family planning services.

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