The original version of this article, by Kate Gilles and Marissa Pine Yeakey, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.

World Contraception Day “centers around a vision for a world where every pregnancy is wanted,” with a goal of enabling “young people to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.”

There are 1.2 billion adolescents (ages 10 to 19) in the world today, accounting for 17 percent of the global population. They are the largest youth cohort in history, and 90 percent live in the developing world. Within that broad age group, very young adolescents (ages 10 to 14) often fall through the cracks of international development work, especially when it comes to health, and reproductive health in particular.

The original version of this op-ed, by António Guterres, appeared in The New York Times.

For many people, Timbuktu has long represented the essence of remoteness: a mythical, faraway place located on the boundaries of our collective consciousness. But like many of the myths associated with colonialism, the reality is very different.

The original version of this article, by Jill Hagey, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.

Over the past few months, the Sahel drought has sparked attention of news media and concerned citizens around the world. Throughout this media blitz, I have been struck by the sharp contrast between this coverage and how the devastating effects of malnutrition are usually portrayed. Malnutrition is often overlooked in favor of more “newsworthy” diseases, and it takes a crisis to focus our attention on this public health issue. Yet an emergency such as this drought – affecting more than 18 million people, including nearly 2 million children – is difficult to ignore.

The number of urban slum dwellers worldwide is staggering. According to UN-Habitat, 827.6 million people live in slums around the world. Despite meeting a Millennium Development Goal to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, the total number of people living in these areas still increased by 55 million between 2000 and 2010. By 2020, the world slum population is projected to reach 889 million. With the majority of people now living in cities, urban priorities are synonymous with human security and environmental sustainability and must be accounted for in the global development agenda.

Burma (also known as Myanmar), a country plagued by internal political turmoil and direct or tacit military rule since 1962, had its first general elections in 50 years in 2010 and long-time jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in the National Assembly, but questions remain as to how much power the military is willing to cede. Demography provides reason for hope that this turn towards democracy is more than temporary.

The original version of this article appeared on The Economist.

Economies benefit when people start having smaller families. As fertility falls, the share of working-age adults in the population creeps up, laying the foundation for the so-called “demographic dividend.” With fewer children, parents invest more in each child’s education, increasing human capital. People tend to save more for their retirement, so more money is available for investment. And women take paid jobs, boosting the size of the workforce. All this is good for economic growth and household income. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study estimated that a decrease of Nigeria’s fertility rate by one child per woman would boost GDP per head by 13 percent over 20 years. But not every consequence of lower fertility is peachy. A new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health identifies another and surprising effect: higher inequality in the short term.

“I’m going to talk about religion. But it’s a broad and very delicate subject, so I have to limit myself. Therefore I will limit myself to only talk about the links between religion and sexuality…I will talk on what I remember as the most wonderful – it’s the moment when the young couple whispers, ‘tonight, we are going to make a baby,’” said Hans Rosling, the eclectic Swedish doctor and statistician known for his Gapminder tool, in a TedxSummit presentation in April.