Saturday, October 31, 2009

Fertility, Family Planning, and Female Social Progress


Key excerpts from a fascinating Economist article about the dropping global fertility rate:

"The move to replacement-level fertility is one of the most dramatic social changes in history. It manifested itself in the violent demonstrations by students against their clerical rulers in Iran this year. It almost certainly contributed to the rising numbers of middle-class voters who backed the incumbent governments of Indonesia and India. It shows up in rural Malaysia in richer, emptier villages surrounded by mechanised farms. And everywhere, it is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated."

"Indonesia’s Family Life Survey showed that, on average, each birth reduced by a fifth the likelihood that a woman would have a job—lowering household income and pushing some families into poverty. So smaller families made middle-class status more likely. Between 1974 and 1996, Bangladesh turned a district called Matlab into a giant demographic experiment: some villages and households got family planning, others did not. According to one study of the results, fertility in the areas that received help declined by around 15% more than in those that did not. And over the two decades of the experiment, indicators of the well-being of women and their children—health, earnings, household assets and so on—were all higher in the villages that got the planning."

"A surprising amount is known about how many children parents want, thanks to a series of surveys by the Demographic and Health Surveys programme. The picture it paints is of huge numbers of unplanned pregnancies. In Brazil, for example, the wanted fertility rate in 1996 (the most recent year available) was 1.8; the actual fertility rate then was 2.5. In India the wanted rate in 2006 was 1.9, the actual one, 2.7. In Ghana the figures for 2003 were 3.7 and 4.4... One study in 2002 estimated that as many as a quarter of all pregnancies in developing countries in the 1990s were unintended. Yet another found that more African women say they want to use contraceptives but cannot get them (25m) than actually use them (18m). Unmet demand in turn implies that fertility in some countries could be even lower than it actually is if more family planning were available."

"Another big reason why fertility is falling: the spread of female education. Go back to the countries where fertility has fallen fastest and you will find remarkable literacy programmes. As early as 1962, for example, 80% of young women in Mauritius could read and write. In Iran in 1976, only 10% of rural women aged 20 to 24 were literate. Now that share is 91%, and Iran not only has one of the best-educated populations in the Middle East but the one in which men and women have the most equal educational chances. Iranian girls aged 15-19 have roughly the same number of years of schooling as boys do. Educated women are more likely to go out to work, more likely to demand contraception and less likely to want large families."

Looking at these facts, how can you possibly argue against family planning unless you just don't care as much about the lives of the living as your own personal principles?

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Forgetting

Just watched a fascinating PBS special on "The Botany of Desire," and was particularly struck by the segment on THC and its ability to help one forget. While I'm generally one to stick to the mantra of "If I could do it all over again, I would do it all the same," I can't help but wonder what life would be life if pharmaceutical induction of forgetting were socially accepted.

I feel like this today: Opening strains of Mother Mother's "Ghosting" and the artwork of Midori Yamada.