Data & Analysis > Monitoring Annual Progress
Additional Users
What are Additional Users and why are they important?

The additional users indicator measures how many more women are using modern contraception in the current year, compared to the number who were using in 2012. The comparison year is 2012 because that was when the FP2020 initiative began, making it the baseline. Additional users is an aggregate concept measuring change at a population level.

The number of additional users of modern contraceptive methods is FP2020's Core Indicator 1, and measures progress towards the initiative's goal. The number of additional users of modern methods can increase in two ways. One is through population growth, without a change in the proportion of women who choose to use contraception. The other way to increase additional users is through increasing the proportion of women who choose to use modern contraception; that is, increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate.

The headline goal for the FP2020 initiative is increasing the number of women using a modern contraceptive method by 120 million between 2012 and 2020.

Modern CPR (mCPR) vs. Additional Users

Additional users are calculated from a total increase in the number of modern contraceptive users in a country. This increase in additional users is not the same as measuring increases in modern contraceptive prevalence (mCPR). This is because in countries where the number of women of reproductive age (15-49) is growing year after year, there will need to be growth in users to just maintain the baseline mCPR.

Beyond increases gained solely through population increases, additional gains in users are made by expanding family planning programs to further increase the mCPR. The additional users indicator captures both concepts. This means that in countries with increasing numbers of women of reproductive age, their additional user numbers will increase each year, even if mCPR remains constant.

The graph above shows an example of this concept for Burkina Faso and Nepal. Both countries had a similar number of additional users in 2019. In Nepal the majority of additional users come from maintaining the 2012 mCPR (e.g. keeping up with the increasing number of women of reproductive age) while in Burkina Faso the majority of additional users were due to increases in mCPR.

Calculating Additional Users

Additional users are measured from the FP2020 baseline year of 2012. This means that there were zero additional users in 2012, and from 2013 onwards, additional users are reported as the difference between the total number of users in the current year, and the number of users there were in 2012. This allows for estimating the cumulative number of additional users through any given year in comparison with 2012.

The total users in each year are calculated by multiplying the mCPR in that year by the estimated number of women of reproductive age in the same year. For more about calculating mCPR, see the Technical Brief on FPET.

To illustrate, the estimated number of modern contraceptive users in Madagascar in 2019 was 2.4 million. To calculate the number of additional users from the FP2020 baseline year of 2012 to the year 2019, the estimated number of contraceptive users in 2012 (1.5 million - dark green area in the graph above) is subtracted from the 2019 estimate (2.4 million), yielding a value of the indicator number of additional users in 2019 of 900 thousand (see light green bar in graph above).

Measuring from a rolling baseline

The calculation of Indicator 1 “Additional Users of Modern Contraception” is based upon a “rolling baseline” for the year 2012. The rolling baseline takes into account the fact that past population size estimates and mCPR estimates will likely change as new census and survey data become available. For more information see the rolling baselines brief.

Explore Additional Users data using StatTrack.

Read more here:
"New Users" Are Confusing Our Counting: Reaching Consensus on How to Measure “Additional Users” of Family Planning

FP2020 Materials on Additional Users:
http://www.familyplanning2020.org/measurement-hub/additional-users