The world population will grow by 2.2 billion people by 2050.
Change the world and assertively decide when to have children. The study on the State of the world population 2018, launched this Wednesday and titled “The Power to decide. Reproductive rights and demographic transition” indicates that there is a worldwide trend towards creating smaller families, especially since the 1960s.
This situation reflects that an increasing number of people make decisions about their reproductive lives choosing the number of children they want and at what moment.
Despite this gradual transition to lower fertility rates, no country can claim that all its citizens enjoy reproductive rights at all times, the report states.
The lack of economic and social support to maintain the desired number of children or the lack of means of pregnancy control are two of the reasons why this situation occurs.
As solutions to achieve freedom of choice for the number of children desired, the United Nations Population Fund proposed a series of measures, including prioritizing access to quality reproductive health services, including modern contraceptives.
It also recommends guaranteeing access to a quality education that includes sex education appropriate to each age; launch campaigns for men to change their attitudes and support the rights of women and girls, and help couples to have more children by favoring the reconciliation of work life with family life.
“The possibility of deciding can change the world. It can rapidly improve the well-being of women and girls, transform families and societies, and accelerate global development, ”explains Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA.
The report indicates that there are 43 countries where women have four or more children, and 38 of them are in Africa. Specifically, in sub-Saharan Africa the figure rises to almost 5.1 births per woman.
Of the twelve * countries studied in Latin America and the Caribbean, representing 85% of the total population of the region, fertility rates range from 1.8 to 2.5 births per woman, far from the rates of 6 children who had many of them during the 1960s.
Despite this transition, most of these nations have difficulties in providing quality education and health services, including reproductive health, to all sectors of the population.
By age, fertility rates in adolescents between 15 and 19 years old and young women between 20 and 24 years old are higher than the rates corresponding to these same age groups in other regions of the world.
“Motherhood in these 12 countries begins shortly after the first sexual intercourse, and the first unions are often formalized near or after pregnancy, often involuntarily,” the report notes.
According to the most recent data, about 50% of births are desired at the time they take place, while others would be desired later and some are not planned at all.
This last data reflects that there is still a significant percentage of pregnancies that are neither desired nor planned.
The countries studied were: Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Costa Rica, Argentina, El Salvador, Brazil and Uruguay.
In all but three countries in East Africa, less than half of the women who participated in the report said they would prefer not to have any more children.
If UNFPA predictions are fulfilled, the proportion of the world population for Africa will increase from 17% in 2017 to 26% in 2050.
As on the African continent, fertility rates are “significantly lower” in cities than in rural areas. For example, in Ethiopia women have around 2.1 children in cities, while in the rest of the country they have around five.
Another link established by the report is that conflicts and insecurity are linked to larger families. UNFPA data also shows that Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Timor-Leste and Yemen have fertility rates higher than the overall average of 2.5 children per woman.