This paper examines the reasons for the high level of unmet need for contraception in rural Egypt, using data from the individual survey and service availability module of the 1988Ð89 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey. Two broad sets of potential factors are considered: characteristics of a woman which influence her desire for children and thus her propensity to use contraception, and factors relating to the family planning service environment in which she lives. The results from a multivariate analysis show that certain individual characteristics, such as family composition and education, have a strong impact on the level of contraceptive use and on the proportion of total demand for spacing or limiting childbearing that is met by use of family planning. Unmet need, however, remains fairly constant across demographic and socioeconomic subgroups of the population. The largest variations in unmet need are regional, but elements of the family planning services, namely the provision of a community-based nurse who distributes family planning and female doctors at clinics, also play an important role.