In addition to improving the health of mothers and their children, family planning programs have made a major contribution to reducing population growth rates. If these programs are sustained, developing world population is projected to reach a level of about 8 billion in the year 2050. Without such programs, that population could grow to more than 11 billion in 2050. Other factors also contribute to slowing population growth, including improving women's education and status, increasing child survival and reducing poverty. Throughout the developing world, millions of mothers and their children die each year due to complications from births that are too close together or too early or too late in a woman's life.
Family planning can prevent a quarter of infant deaths by spacing births at least two years apart.
Family planning can also prevent at least one in four maternal deaths by allowing women to delay motherhood, and avoid unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. These global problems know no boundaries and affect people everywhere, including the U.S. Expanding populations also undermine developing country efforts to provide citizens with adequate health care, food, education and jobs. And chances increase that people will migrate to the U.S. in search of employment and a better life. A. Assistance for voluntary family planning and reproductive health services is provided in more than 60 countries throughout the developing world, Eastern Europe and the former states of the Soviet Union. These families are better able to feed, clothe, educate and provide health care for their children.