Global Population

The Impact of Freedom on Fertility Decline

Martha Campbell
Malcolm Potts
Ndola Prata
2013

Although fertility decline often correlates with improvements in socioeconomic conditions, many demographers have found flaws in demographic transition theories that depend on changes in distal factors such as increased wealth or education. Human beings worldwide engage in sexual intercourse much more frequently than is needed to conceive the number of children they want, and for women who do not have access to the information and means they need to separate sex from childbearing, the default position is a large family. In many societies, male patriarchal drives to control female...

Why Bold Policies for Family Planning are Needed Now

Malcolm Potts
Rachel Weinrib
Martha Campbell
2013

Last spring at a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) talk in Berlin, Melinda Gates used this phrase, “The most transformative thing you can do is to give people access to birth control.” She expressed similar sentiments at the London Summit on Family Planning on July 11, 2012, as did the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Andrew Mitchell who was then Secretary of State for the Department for International Development, the British equivalent of United States Agency for International Development. The London Summit represented a new focus on international family planning after...

Les grandes questions meritent des responses audacieuses: la population et le changement climatique au Sahel

Malcolm Potts
Alisha Graves
2013

Certaines régions d’Afrique ont la croissance démographique la plus rapide du monde. Des études récentes menées par les climatologues indiquent que dans les prochaines décennies, les zones écologiquement vulnérables de l’Afrique, y compris le Sahel, seront exposées aux effets néfastes les plus sévères du réchauffement climatique. La menace qui pèse sur certaines régions de l’Afrique sub-saharienne est extrême. Heureusement, il existe des politiques réalistes fondées sur des preuves qui peuvent largement améliorer ce qui autrement constituerait une catastrophe qui s’évolue lentement d...