State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

CHAPTER
TWO
Analysing data and trends to
understand the needs
Global trends in fertility
Last year, the world’s population surpassed 7 billion and it is projected to reach
9 billion by 2050. Population growth is generally highest in the poorest countries,
where fertility preferences are the highest, where governments lack the resources to
meet the increasing demand for services and infrastructure, where jobs growth is
not keeping pace with the number of new entrants into the labour force, and
where many population groups face great difficulty in accessing family planning
information and services (Population Reference Bureau, 2011; UNFPA, 2011b).
t
In Mali, a couple
with their sons.
©Panos/Giacomo
Pirozzi
Worldwide, birth rates have continued to decline
slowly. However, large disparities exist between
more developed and less developed regions. This
is particularly true for sub-Saharan Africa, where
women give birth to three times as many children
on average as women
in more developed regions
of the world (5.1 versus
1.7 births per woman).
A large part of this difference
reflects a desire
for larger families in sub-
Saharan Africa, but as
most women in this region
now want to have fewer
children (Westoff and
Bankole, 2002), fertility
differences increasingly
reveal limited and unequal access in the
developing world to the means to prevent
unintended pregnancy.
Fertility rates
Poverty, gender inequality and social
pressures are all reasons for persistent high
fertility. But in nearly all of the least-developed
countries, lack of access to voluntary family
planning is a major contributing factor.
Who is using family
planning
The use of modern family
planning methods as measured
by the contraceptive prevalence
rate has increased globally at
a very modest pace of 0.1 per
cent per year in recent years,
more slowly than in the previous
decade (United Nations,
Department of Economic
and Social Affairs, 2011). The
modest increase is partially a function of the
large increase in the numbers of married women
of reproductive age—a 25 per cent increase
Total fertility rate
(births per woman)
World................................................ 2.5
More Developed............................. 1.7
Less Developed.............................. 2.8
Least Developed............................ 4.5
Sub-Saharan Africa....................... 5.1
Source: United Nations, 2011a.
THE STATE OF WORLD POPULATION 2012
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