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  • VIDEO: Nicholas Kristof On Comprehensive Approaches to Family Planning

    October 2, 2009 By Wilson Center Staff
    “Poor countries can’t begin to deal with food issues, with economic pressures, with conflict and shortages of water and grassland that may lead to social conflict, unless they begin to deal with population problems,” journalist Nicholas Kristof tells ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko in a video interview.

    But “the single most effective contraceptive isn’t any kind of device,” Kristof says, “it’s girl’s education. And that has the most extraordinary impact on birthrates.” Unfortunately, this approach to family planning has “been neglected in the last 20 years.”

    Empowering women and girls may be our best strategy for fighting poverty, claim Kristof and WuDunn in their new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which was launched at the Wilson Center.

    Half the Sky tells the transformational stories of women and girls who are the “face of statistics” on four appalling realities: maternal mortality, sexual violence, and lack of education and economic opportunities.
    Topics: family planning, global health, maternal health, population, poverty, video
    • Richard Cincotta

      While girls' education has enormous impacts on the pace of the demographic transition, Mr. Kristoff's portrayal of it as an "effective contraceptive" is an ideological statement, rather than an accurate or useful portrayal of a model of fertility decline. The model is more complex (which I thought was his original point): Higher levels of girls' educational attainment is associated with lower "desired family size". As desired family size declines, fertility tends to decline, typically in response to delays in marriage, and use of modern contraception and abortion (whether legal or illegal). Women who are educated at the secondary or tertiary level are typically sexually active, yet as a group, and in every world region, they experience lower fertility. However, this would not be the case without access to a range of affordable modern contraception and accurate information.
      Mr. Kristoff, education is not an effective contraceptive; among women, higher educational attainment tends to increase the desire to use an effective contraceptive method. Other improvements in the lies of women increase that desire as well. That said, there are many, many reasons to work hard to improve girls' educational attainment — and its connection with fertility is a good one, but just one.

    • Richard Cincotta

      After writing the above response, I thought to myself, why do I know that education is not a contraceptive and feel so strongly about it? An easy answer: my experience as a high school teacher in Kenya (1976-79; St. Lucy's Girls Sec. School, South Nyanza). Our biggest retention problem for our high school girls was not illness, nor lack of funds to continue — it was pregnancy. Although St. Lucy's is a boarding secondary school, an unknown number of girls became pregnant during the 3 one-month vacation breaks each year. I indicated "an unknown number" because one of the schools leading health problems was self-induced abortion. Once a student figured out that she was pregnant, she often induced abortion through over-dosing on chloroquine (then the most popular malaria prophylaxis) — in other words, mildly poisoning herself to induce abortion. The method is very effective, and very dangerous. Students aborted into the pit latrines where they could dispose of the fetus at night, though traces were often discovered the next morning.
      Thus, Mr. Kristoff, I beg to differ — education is not an effective contraceptive. I realize that you mean well in promoting girls education — and it is worth promoting for many reasons. It does not substitute for access to a wide choice of modern contraception and the information that supports its safe use.

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