State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

Family planning programmes reinforce the
positive impacts of other programmes that
invest in human capital. By reducing maternal
mortality and increasing life expectancy, such
programmes raise the return to schooling and
thus increase the returns to investment in
education, particularly for girls. Governments
should regard family planning in the same
way they view and prioritize other humancapital
investments in education, labour force
participation and political participation.
By reducing maternal mortality and increasing life expectancy,
such programmes raise the return to schooling and thus
increase the returns to investment in education, particularly for
girls. Governments should regard family planning in the same
way they view and prioritize other human-capital investments in
education, labour force participation and political participation.
The close relationship between declines in
fertility and improvements in women’s rights
suggests that governments and multilateral
institutions should not only focus on promoting
direct legislative changes for women’s rights but
should also invest in family planning and other
programmes that invest in human capital. This
is one more way of improving the bargaining
position of women in society.
Family planning programmes are not,
however, a substitute for other types of
investments in human capital. In fact, family
planning programmes and declines in fertility
have their maximum impact in societies that
are making complementary investments in
increasing female schooling, expanding labour
market opportunities, and experiencing
economic changes that fundamentally change
the cost-benefit tradeoff of high fertility.
Programmes have often been most effective
when coupled with other types of maternal
and child health inputs.
3 Ensure the right to family planning
of specific excluded groups
As an essential part of governments’ commitments
to rectifying inequalities in health,
programmes must address the financial,
physical, legal, social and cultural factors that
make it difficult for so many people to seek
health services and overcome the intersecting
forms of discrimination they may face.
Poor women who have no access to family
planning have more children than they intend.
Meanwhile, wealthy and educated elites,
wherever they are, tend to have access to family
planning, independent of whether policies or
programmes support it. In many countries, even
though efforts have been made to overcome
health inequities by targeting services for the
poor, the benefits are often accrued mainly
by those who are already better off (Gwatkin
and others, 2007). To improve access to
contraceptive information and services for the
poor, programmes must often address not just
the financial obstacles but also the physical
obstacles (such as distance to health facilities
and the opportunity costs of lost work time
to visit family planning providers) and social
and cultural factors (including disrespectful or
judgmental treatment by health workers, lack
of autonomy in making decisions about health
services or family or community opposition to
contraceptive use).
In countries where it is needed, new legislation
should be introduced to ensure universal
access to family planning; in others, steps
must be taken to ensure the equitable
implementation of existing legislation, policies
and programming. Government support for
family planning should include actions that
make services available to marginalized groups,
102 CHAPTER 6: MAKING THE RIGHT TO FAMILY PLANNING UNIVERSAL