Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.
United Nations projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, and lessen pressures on already strained natural resources, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.
Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes that “if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level ... they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.” Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.
The good news is that countries that want to help couples reduce family size can do so quickly. In just one decade Iran dropped its near-record population growth rate to one of the lowest in the developing world. When Ayatollah Khomeini assumed leadership in Iran in 1979, he immediately dismantled the well-established family planning programs and instead advocated large families. In response to his pleas, fertility levels climbed, pushing Iran’s annual population growth to a peak of 4.2 percent in the early 1980s, a level approaching the biological maximum. As this enormous growth began to burden the economy and the environment, the country’s leaders realized that overcrowding, environmental degradation, and unemployment were undermining Iran’s future. (See here for more information.)
In 1989 the government did an about-face and restored its family planning program. In May 1993, a national family planning law was passed. The resources of several government ministries, including education, culture, and health, were mobilized to encourage smaller families. Iran Broadcasting was given responsibility for raising awareness of population issues and of the availability of family planning services. Some 15,000 “health houses” or clinics were established to provide rural populations with health and family planning services.
Religious leaders were directly involved in what amounted to a crusade for smaller families. Iran introduced a full panoply of contraceptive measures, including the option of male sterilization—a first among Muslim countries. All forms of birth control, including contraceptives such as the pill and sterilization, were free of charge. In fact, Iran became a pioneer—the only country to require couples to take a class on modern contraception before receiving a marriage license.
In addition to the direct health care interventions, a broad-based effort was launched to raise female literacy, boosting it from 25 percent in 1970 to more than 70 percent in 2000. Female school enrollment increased from 60 to 90 percent. Television was used to disseminate information on family planning throughout the country, taking advantage of the 70 percent of rural households with TV sets. As a result of this initiative, family size in Iran dropped from seven children to fewer than three. From 1987 to 1994, Iran cut its population growth rate by half. Its population growth rate of 1.3 percent in 2006 is only slightly higher than that in the United States.
While the attention of researchers has focused on the role of formal education in reducing fertility, soap operas on radio and television can even more quickly change people’s attitudes about reproductive health, gender equity, family size, and environmental protection. A well-written soap opera can have a profound short-term effect on population growth. It costs relatively little and can proceed even while formal educational systems are being expanded.
The power of this approach was pioneered by Miguel Sabido, a vice president of Televisa, Mexico’s national television network, with a series of soap opera segments on illiteracy. The day after one of his soap opera characters visited a literacy office wanting to learn how to read and write, a quarter-million people showed up at these offices in Mexico City. Eventually 840,000 Mexicans enrolled in literacy courses after watching the series. Sabido dealt with contraception in another soap opera, and within a decade this drama series helped reduce Mexico’s birth rate by 34 percent.
Other groups quickly picked up this approach. The U.S.-based Population Media Center has initiated projects in some 15 countries and is planning launches in several others. Their radio dramas in Ethiopia, for example, address issues of health and gender equity, such as HIV/AIDS, family planning, and the education of girls. A survey two years after the broadcasts began in 2002 found that 63 percent of new clients seeking reproductive health care at Ethiopia’s 48 service centers reported listening to one of the dramas. Demand for contraceptives increased 157 percent.
The costs of providing reproductive health and family planning services are small compared with their benefits. Expanding these services to reach all women in the developing countries would take close to $17 billion in additional funding from both industrial and developing countries.
Shifting to smaller families brings generous economic dividends. For Bangladesh, analysts concluded that $62 spent by the government to prevent an unwanted birth saved $615 in expenditures on other social services. Investing in reproductive health and family planning services leaves more fiscal resources per child for education and health care, thus accelerating the escape from poverty.
Helping countries that want to slow their population growth to do so quickly brings with it what economists call the demographic bonus. When countries move quickly to smaller families, growth in the number of young dependents—those who need nurturing and educating—declines relative to the number of working adults. In this situation, productivity surges, savings and investment climb, and economic growth accelerates. This effect lasts for only a few decades, but it is usually enough to launch a country into the modern era. Indeed, except for a few oil-rich countries, no developing country has successfully modernized without slowing population growth.
The United Nations estimates that meeting the needs of the 201 million women who do not have access to effective contraception could each year prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies, 22 million induced abortions, and 1.4 million infant deaths. Put simply, the costs to society of not filling the family planning gap may be greater than we can afford.
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Originally published at earthpolicy.org. Adapted from Chapter 7, “Eradicating Poverty, Stabilizing Population,” in Lester R. Brown’s book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008).
Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on Valentine’s Day
[UPDATED] While the big cats cower, time to build robust food economies
Comments
View as Flat
Pompey Road Posted 3:20 am
21 Jan 2009
Grossly overpopulated planet every tribe in competition for diminishing resources.
The have's exploiting the have not's for centuries and now that their population is putting additional stress on the planets oil, food and water supply you want to neuter them.
Your timing is lousy, since your corporate greed finally destroyed the economic system along with most all the resources you are trying to horde it will be hard to fund the sterilization of the third world.
Not to worry for brother Malthus will come to your aid.
The only natural predator to man is War, Famine, Disease and the fourth horseman fermenting the hate and stirring the fire in the Middle East.
One naturally follows the other so just "cry Havoc and loose the dogs of war"
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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racc Posted 5:54 am
21 Jan 2009
Regarding your other point, which I think is over consumption in the "developed" world, that is what we all should be doing everything we can to address. In fact, our future prosperity depends on doing more with much less energy and resources.
It is not about us, it is about everyone.
http://www.everyoneforever.org/
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:23 am
21 Jan 2009
Educate/Empower Women
Contraception
-David Ahlport
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Pompey Road Posted 6:49 am
21 Jan 2009
Your efforts are noble, I wish you well but the reality depicted in the piece describing the mindset of the nations up to this point in time will make your efforts difficult.
It is hard to educate those who can not read. It is hard to educate the ears closed by religious dogma. Family counseling and family planning will be difficult in some third world countries under the influence of the religions left over from the 7th century.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Pompey Road Posted 6:54 am
21 Jan 2009
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:11 pm
21 Jan 2009
One thing that people need to consider is just how long it took us to reach this level of population.
Yes, population expands geometrically, but the tick mark is a human generation, 20 to 40 years.
Now, yes, that can seem fast, but think of it this way. Suppose our replacement rate were 1. In a single generation we could half our population from 8 billion to 4 billion.
Now suppose our replacement rate were something like .25 -- where many opted out of direct parenting and became "aunts and uncles" helping to rear a relative or friend's child (A Village).
I think alot of people would like that relationship, somewhere between a parent and childless. But at the same time, look at how quickly our population could be reduced.
So, I guess I would caution people that while it seems like a good idea, it does take a long time to bring back population...
You are now living in the Hansen Economy!
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biodiversivist Posted 3:46 pm
21 Jan 2009
Obama's second full day as president falls on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States.
The sources said Obama may use the occasion to reverse the "Mexico City policy" reinstated in 2001 by Bush that prohibits U.S. money from funding international family planning groups that promote abortion or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion services. It bans any organization receiving family planning funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from offering abortions or abortion counseling.
The "Mexico City policy," commonly referred to by critics as "the global gag rule," was devised by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 at a population conference in Mexico City.
President Bill Clinton lifted the ban in January 1993 as one of his first acts as president, but President George W. Bush reinstated it in his first executive order on January 22, 2001, the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
At the time, critics -- including Planned Parenthood -- called the move a "legislative ambush."
Bush defended the action, saying then: "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortion or actively promote abortion.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/19/obama.abortion/ind ...
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 9:38 pm
21 Jan 2009
They want to out populate the "evildoers" and "infidels". Their religious warriors are supposed to beat back the inhuman hordes who don't believe in their particular God.
From the left, it is the evil of capitalism that is at fault for family planning. Poor populations must swell to overthrow the evil overlords. The overlords are behind the "neutering".
The way to defeat both sides who oppose women's reproductive (and all other rights) is evidently to present examples of the personal family success of those who engage in family planning through popular media.
Maddona says "Papa Don't Preach" and Sarah the Wolf killer encourages teens to get pregnant. Hollywood teen stars make underage pregnancy look glamorous, the unlimited material world purveyors tell kids to grab that lottery ticket and go for it. Maybe you'll be the next Hannah Montana. Goop on that makeup and start having unprotected sex.
Meanwhile in Iran and Mexico the popular media presents "soap opera"/novella parables that promote women's reproductive (and all other) rights? And it's working? Who knew? Thanks Lester!
Barack, you have got the wrong advisors if Brown, Lovins, Romm, and other voices of reason are not among them. Could someone get Obama to check his blackberry by sending this message? If he has enough spare time left after all the prayers?
Oh yeah, since this post was held up I see bio-d posted a new comment just before mine. One of the best comments on this topic, written right here was a story about him talking with his daughter about this. Mexican (and progressive american) soap writers might want to read it. Brilliant! Now where is that link?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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usandthem Posted 11:44 pm
22 Jan 2009
Why not ask why!?
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biodiversivist Posted 9:55 am
23 Jan 2009
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Suds Posted 3:08 am
30 Jan 2009
However, one can argue that the low end world population projection of the United Nations for 2050 is not compatible with a sustainable world for humanity to live in. If that is the case, the low end population projection is not of itself an adequate goal for population stability.
In our worldly environment, the consequences of population growth may have been foreshadowed by the housing and finance growth and subsequent collapse. One can consider whether the world is in a population bubble that also will burst in some unexpected way at some unexpected time. Recognizing that a bubble exists is not, however, a reason for giving up but rather a reason for redoubling efforts.
http://sillysuds.blogspot.com/
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