New research has found that high infant mortality rates in low and middle-income nations are contributing to rising population levels globally, supporting arguments for greater access to contraception and family planning.
The study, published in PLOS ONE, and led by Professor of Paediatrics Peter Le Souëf from The University of Western Australia and Matthews Flinders Professor of Global Ecology Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University, and co-authored by UWA’s Dr Melinda Judge, Chitra Saraswati and Claire Perry, found higher infant death rates were linked to higher population growth.
Professor Le Souëf said family planning, including access to quality contraception, enabled women to plan pregnancies better and therefore reduce infant mortality to curb the so-called ‘replacement’ or ‘insurance’ effect.
“The research provides a compelling argument that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for reducing infant mortality can be accelerated by increasing access to family planning,” Professor Le Souëf said.
“We found that allowing parents to choose family planning by providing readily available, modern methods of contraception could be expected to improve infant survival as well as reduce maternal mortality.
“This is because parents can plan and space their births and, being able to decide to have fewer children, also has the potential to facilitate better investment in the overall health and well-being of families.
“If we don’t act now to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, fertility will rise, more children will die and more women will succumb to birth-related deaths.”
Professor Bradshaw said the research supported arguments for greater access to contraception and family planning in low and middle-income countries.
“We evaluated six conditions thought to influence a woman’s fertility — availability of family planning, quality of family planning, education, religion, infant mortality, and socio-economic conditions, across 64 low- and middle-income nations,” Professor Bradshaw said.
“Interestingly, we found that keeping babies alive actually reduced average fertility and helped put the brakes on population growth.”
Professor Bradshaw said that while it sounded counterintuitive, higher baby death rates were linked to higher population growth because the more babies a women lost, the more children she was likely to have.
The study found that female education, home visits by health workers, quality of family planning services, and religious adherence all had weak, if any, contribution at the scale of entire countries.