Investing $1 in Free Contraception Yields $40 Globally

The Post-2015 Consensus' latest set of papers suggest setting universal access to sexual and reproductive health services as a target for the post-2015 development agenda and eliminating the unmet need for contraception will reduce potentially unsustainable population growth.

There was a time when we worried about a “population explosion,” with ever more people fighting over ever fewer resources. Yet, the population growth has decreased since the late 1960s and resources have not run out.

There are still population problems, but the two main ones are likely different from what you think.

The UN expects 2.4 billion more people by 2050. But contrary to common knowledge, this is not mostly about couples having lots of babies. Remember, the average woman in the developing world had 5.4 children in the early 1970s, but today that number has dropped to half at 2.7.

Even if every man and woman just had one baby survive, world population would still increase by 1.9 billion by 2050. More children only explain half a billion of the population increase. That we live longer explains another 0.4 billion. But the most important factor – 1.5 billion more by 2050 – is simply because we’re still a young world, where many youngsters are yet to have their own family.

This doesn’t mean the half-billion is unimportant. If families have fewer children, they can invest more in their future, giving them much greater earning potential. As countries get more prosperous, their birth rates fall. Mothers have fewer children who are better-educated and themselves have small families.

Increasing prosperity is shared among fewer people. This is what first happened in the Old World during the Industrial Revolution, and the living standards of Europeans rose rapidly. More recently, a number of East Asian countries have gone through a similar transition, none more so than China. The good news is that it could work anywhere, also allowing African countries catching up fast.

The Chinese government slowed the growth of its population by imposing a “one-child per family” rule. This may have been good economically, but was also an infringement of human rights. Fortunately, there are other, less drastic, ways to travel this road, particularly by making modern contraception available to everyone who wants it.

Population is just one key issue on the agenda for the international community at the moment of focus of our research on set of research on the smartest population and demography targets for the post-2015 development agenda

So, what’s the smartest target?

Providing universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and eliminating the unmet need for contraception will reduce population growth.

This target will annually result in 640,000 fewer newborn deaths, 150,000 fewer maternal deaths and 600,000 fewer children who lose their mother. With fewer kids, the parents can afford better schooling. At the same time, societies will enjoy a demographic dividend, with few dependents and many in the work force, driving faster economic growth.

Professors Hans-Peter Kohler and Jere R. Behrman from the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the costs will be about $3.6 billion/year, but the benefits are more than $400 billion annually. In total, each dollar spent will do $120 of benefits.

At the same time developed countries face a problem of ageing. The authors suggest that we should tackle this in a simple way: increasing access to migration, which will rejuvenate ageing workforces and, has benefits of more than $45 per dollar spent. This is much more effective than increasing fertility organically within rich countries via subsidies or incentives.

There are other promising targets, which are more difficult to cost – discouraging early retirement and dependency, for example. But overall, the economists make a powerful argument for why contraception and migration should be prioritized on the list of global targets.

You can read the all the reports here. Hans-Peter Kohler, Professor of Demography and Jere R. Behrman, Jr. Professor of Economics both from the University of Pennsylvania write the main report, peer-reviewed in alternative perspective papers by David Canning, Professor of Population Sciences and of Economics and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and by Oded Galor, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and by Gregory Casey, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Economics both from Brown University. Additionally, Michael Herrmann, Senior Advisor on Population and Economics at UNFPA and member of the United Nations task team on the post-2015 development agenda and sustainable development goals presents a viewpoint paper concerning Kohler and Behrman’s analysis.