World population prospects and unmet need for family planning.

Abstract

This report shows that meeting womens stated desires to limit or space births would have a major impact on world population growth. If countries were able to meet all unmet need for family planning the pace of population growth would decline below the United Nations medium projection moving closer to the UN low projection. By 2050 the population of the 99 developing countries (excluding China) and the US that were included in the study would be 6.3 billion if all unmet need for family planning were met compared with the UN medium projection of 6.7 billion. The estimated cumulative cost of meeting unmet need for family planning in developing countries up to 2050 is US$638 billion -- about midway between the costs of reaching the UN medium and low projections.