Dear Colleague:

Some countries should clearly be free of American attempts to reduce their
populations.  If anything, USAID should be promoting the reverse.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
17 February 2006
Vol. 8 / No. 7


Family Planning Graduation
By Joseph A. D'Agostino


It's time to graduate some Third World countries from American-sponsored
population control.  "Population stabilization" in developing countries is
an official purpose of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), though in keeping with the zeitgeist, efforts to achieve that
goal are today called family planning programs.  In this time of massive
deficits, American taxpayers pay over $400 million a year (conservatively
estimated) to reduce the populations of Third World nations whose
birthrates have already collapsed or are collapsing.  In fact, if USAID
wants to promote long-term population stabilization in the Third World, it
should be encouraging women to have more children rather than less.
Birthrates have been on a rapid downward trajectory in almost every
country in the world.

Over 50 developing countries are on USAID's family planning list.  These
countries are in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East,
Asia, and Africa.  Some of these countries have dangerously low birthrates
and should not be targeted for contraception under any rational analysis.

Russia, not usually considered a developing country, is on the list.
Surely she can take care of herself when it comes to family planning?
Actually, she can't, as her population commits suicide.  According to the
United Nations Population Division, the Russian birthrate has dropped to
1.4 children per woman over her lifetime on average, disastrously lower
than the minimum replacement rate of 2.1.  This comes as Russians emigrate
to other parts of the world in substantial numbers.  Russia is already
shrinking by over 500,000 people annually as the remaining population ages
rapidly.  If Americans are to be taxed to assist Russia in her population
efforts, a questionable proposition at best, it should be to promote
childbearing instead of the opposite.

It is not only mighty former enemies to which USAID ships contraception by
the boatload.  Tiny little Armenia, already the victim of a massive
genocide by the Turks in the 20th Century, has a birthrate of 1.4 also,
and is also losing people though it has only 3 million to begin with.  The
UN conservatively projects that the proportion of retirees (people 65 or
older) in the population will double to 24% by 2050.  Can Armenia afford
that?  Why are we contributing to this problem?

Russia's neighbor, Georgia, has the popular 1.4 birthrate and a shrinking
population.  Bulgaria has a dismal 1.2 rate and a shrinking population.
Romania has a rate of 1.3 and a shrinking population.  The united nation
of Serbia and Montenegro has a rate of 1.6 and a shrinking population.
Democratic Ukraine has a rate of 1.2 and a rapidly shrinking population.
Yet all these nations, with populations already contracting and with
birthrates that will lead to more rapid contractions in the future, get
family planning money from USAID.  Instead, the agency should be shipping
badly-needed babies to these nations, whose social support systems are due
to go bankrupt from lack of working-age people in the next few decades.
These countries' fiscal futures make the United States' problems with
Social Security and Medicare seem very minor indeed.

Closer to home, the nations where USAID has family planning programs do
have birthrates over replacement level, but the UN projects they soon
won't be in many of them.  Why should America encourage the suicidal
trend?  Jamaica has a barely-adequate 2.3 birthrate now, but that will
drop below replacement within 20 years at the most.  Bolivia's, now at
3.5, will be below replacement in 30 years.  The Dominican Republic's is
at 2.6 now but will drop below 2.1 within 25 years.  And so on for some
others, including El Salvador and Nicaragua.  In addition, many of these
nations send out large numbers of emigrants each year, necessitating a
birthrate higher than 2.1 to keep their populations stable and their age
demographics affordable.

Some might say that regardless of the wisdom of our efforts elsewhere,
promoting family planning in sub-Saharan Africa, with its incessant
famines and other disasters, is a good idea.  That is not the case.  Those
famines, massacres, civil wars, and the AIDS epidemic mean that high
birthrates are necessary to keep those nations alive.  Even relatively
affluent South Africa, on USAID's list, has a birthrate of 2.6 but a net
reproduction rate per woman of only 0.95.  That means that, on average,
less than one daughter is produced per South African woman.  Despite
having a birthrate well over 2.1, South Africa is on the path to
extinction.  Other nations on the list, from Angola to Zimbabwe, may need
birthrates as high as 6 children per woman or more in order to weather the
crises that continually convulse the continent, particularly in a region
where adult HIV infection rates are sometimes over 35%.  Despite its HIV
infection rate of 25%, Zimbabwe is on USAID's list.  The country has a
birthrate of 3.2 and a net reproduction rate of only 1.05.

According to USAID itself, "The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to ravage the
continent, although there are hopeful signs that prevention and treatment
measures are beginning to slow its spread.  Prevalence rates remain high
in all of southern Africa, reaching 25% in Zimbabwe and almost 40% in
Swaziland and Botswana.  Of the estimated 34-46 million people infected by
HIV worldwide, 25-28 million reside in sub-Saharan Africa.  Over 80% are
in their productive years and two-thirds are female."  Average life
expectancy is on the decline, and USAID predicts it will fall below 35
within a decade in some nations, "significantly impacting prospects for
economic growth and further straining household incomes."  Depriving these
nations of substantial portions of their future generations is not a good
idea.

It's true that maternal mortality has tended to fall in countries where
population control has become widespread.  After all, if women have few
children, they are less likely to die in childbirth.  But to borrow a
phrase from environmentalists, that's not a sustainable model.  Here in
the First World, it's almost unheard-of for a woman to die during
childbirth or from complications from pregnancy.  The solution to maternal
mortality in the Third World is not to export more condoms and injectable
contraceptive hormones, but to export the hygienic standards, antibiotics,
and technology that have almost rendered maternal death a thing of the
past in the West.  This is especially true since so many of the
contraceptives that the Firth World sends the Third can have terrible side
effects.  Some, like Norplant, even used to be sold in the United States
but are no longer because they are so dangerous, but into the bodies of
Third World women they continue to go.

Another thing USAID should change: It, like other family planning
organizations, measures its success by contraceptive prevalence rates.
The more women using contraception, the better.  This does not allow for
the preferences of local people or their continued survival as peoples
over the years.  This criterion of success should be abandoned.

To assist in population stabilization and deduct a little from the federal
deficit, USAID should graduate nations from its family planning programs.
The damage has been done.


Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.


To see USAID's list of nations targeted for family planning, go to:

http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/pop/countries/index.html


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