Promoting Access to Family Planning in Developing Countries

^{Recently, commentators in several prominent U.S. publications have declared that the population explosion is over and concluded that the increase is not any longer a significant policy issue. "The population boom may be a bust," declares one. One statistic commonly cited as evidence of this is often the worldwide decline in fertility rates (the number of youngsters born per woman). It's true that fertility worldwide has fallen from about six in 1950 to around three in 1998.}

^{Furthermore, between the first 1960s and 1998, fertility rates within the developing world have declined from 6.1 to 3.3. The sharpest declines occurred in East Asia—from 5.9 to 1.8—and Latin America—6.0 to 3.0. United Nations projections suggest that the world's population could begin to say no in about 50 years. If global fertility has declined so sharply, should we and other donor countries still invest in overseas population assistance programs, particularly family planning? In any case, given these trends, is not the work of birth control finished? Not yet. The world's population remains growing.}

^{Although the speed of growth has been declining since the 1960s, the global population grows annually by approximately 80 million people or the equivalent of the population of a rustic dimension of Germany. Nearly all of this growth is concentrated within the developing nations of the planet, in many of which fertility rates remain high. High fertility can impose costly burdens on developing nations. It's going to impede opportunities for economic development, increase health risks for ladies and youngsters, and erode the standard of life by reducing access to education, nutrition, employment, and scarce resources like potable water. Furthermore, surveys of girls in developing countries suggest that an outsized percentage—from 10 to 40 percent—want to space or limit childbearing but aren't using contraception.}

By: Jyoti Nayak

Birla School, Pilani