Financial and geographic barriers prevent many young people from paying for services or being able to access clinics. Unequal power relations and sexual coercion between boys and girls and older men and girls often prevent girls from negotiating the timing of sex and contraceptive usage. Attitudes toward sex, particularly premarital sex, often result in the restriction of information and access to services for young people. Low levels of female education lead to less reproductive decision-making power and earlier childbearing among many young women. Ensuring young people's reproductive health is not solely the responsibility of the health sector, but also that of the education, poverty, and population sectors.
Young people represent a large and growing population group.
Associated with the demographic transition is an absolute and relative increase in the population of older people. Investments in the human capital of youth are necessary to build a healthy workforce that can support and ensure the welfare of the elderly population. Schoolgirls who become pregnant are either forced to leave school, risk unsafe abortions to avoid leaving school, and are prevented from returning to school after giving birth, because they have to take care of their child. Young women who become pregnant at an early age, therefore, achieve lower levels of education than women who delay childbearing until their 20s. World Bank, 1998.