Development: Slow down population growth

[progressoid]

Within a decade, women everywhere should have access to quality contraceptive services, argues John Bongaarts.

In 2100, our planet is expected to be home to 11.2 billion people. That's a more than 50% increase on today's 7.3 billion1. This expansion of humanity is likely to be spread unevenly across the world. In the most developed regions, we expect declines (such as in Europe and east Asia) or little further growth (as in the Americas; see ‘Bulges, gaps and shifts’). Substantial further growth is anticipated in the least developed regions of south and west Asia (including in India and Pakistan) and north Africa (for example, in Egypt). By far the largest increase is projected in sub-Saharan Africa with a quadrupling of population — from just shy of 1 billion currently to 3.9 billion.

~~~

The results were clear-cut. Contraceptive use jumped from 5% to 33% among married women of reproductive age in the experimental area. In the control area, little changed. As a result, fertility declined rapidly in the experimental area. A difference of about 1.5 births per woman between the experimental and control areas was observed until 1990, and a smaller difference continued beyond 1996, when the experiment ended. Among the long-term consequences of this difference were the children in the experimental area being educated to higher levels, families having greater household assets, and the greater use of preventive health services. The experiment demonstrated that family-planning programmes can succeed even in highly traditional societies.

Contemporary evidence is fully consistent with the Matlab record. For example, countries that have suddenly implemented comprehensive family-planning programmes (such as Iran in 1989 and Rwanda in the mid-2000s) have seen rapid subsequent changes in reproductive behaviour.

Iran's fertility declined at an extraordinary pace from 5.6 births per woman in the late 1980s to 2.6 a decade later6. In Rwanda, fertility dropped from 6.1 in 2005 to 4.6 in 2010, and the proportion of married women using contraception jumped from 17% to 52%7. Both countries' information programmes shifted norms by including messages about the benefits of smaller families, raising the demand for family-planning services.



Much more... http://www.nature.com/news/development-slow-down-population-growth-1.19415?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1602_POPULATIONGROWTH_PORTFOLIO

[Warpy]

1. Access to contraceptives won't do it in some of the most overpopulated areas

What you have to do is lift women up above the status of (preferably male) baby incubators. The amazing thing is how little it takes, microlending has been part of it and some of the businesses are ingenious. I know I've made 2 and sometimes 3 loans to the same women and I've noticed that once she's got her own income, her fertility rate drops.

Education also works, but that takes more time. You want to make sure we don't end up with 12 billion people on the planet waiting for the next pandemic or famine to wipe them out, give women what they need to raise their status.

Then the birth control will work.

[GliderGuider]

2. Too bad that there are already over 100X too many people on the planet.

That kind of makes the whole argument moot. You can't reduce a population by 99% with microloans and the pill.

[Nihil]

3. Yeah but don't forget ...

... the GM rice and other profitable shit ... they need those consumers to CONSUME not
to have their target audience reduced to a sensible size ...

Really GG, where is your sense of Growth Economy, Record Dividends and Greed?
Are you not being a Model Corporate Citizen?