‘Population anxiety’ fuelling harmful fertility policies, says UN
Rising “population anxiety” is leading governments to adopt ineffective and harmful fertility policies that damage human rights and gender equality, the UN has warned.
Climate change, mass displacement, the Covid pandemic and economic uncertainty have fuelled a widespread fear of both overpopulation and underpopulation across the globe in recent years, according to research by the UN’s sexual and reproductive agency (UNFPA) released on Wednesday.
In high-fertility countries, governments can veer towards imposing coercive measures, said Tomas Sobotka, deputy director of the Vienna Institute of Demography. These policies can end up targeting minorities, which are often singled out as groups that are “over-reproducing”, he added.
Voluntary family planning programmes can help cut maternal mortality rates, reduce adolescent pregnancies and improve educational attainment, the report said, but economic and development benefits should come second to the “essential goal of empowering women and girls to exercise choice over their own bodies and futures”.
“Policies should not enforce top-down government views about desirable fertility levels or population size,” said Sobotka, adding that focusing only on financial incentives would fail in the long term.
“Women in lower-fertility countries are now highly educated and do not want to spend their productive ages solely as housewives caring for their kids,” he added.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Federica Cocco
