United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population DivisionWorld Family Planning 2020: Highlights, United Nations Publications, 2020. 46 p.

Abstract

The United Nations Population Division (UNPD) is best known for its widely used and respected analyses of global demographic trends. At 2-year intervals UNDP publishes country and regional estimates (from 1950) and projections (to 2100) for population, fertility, mortality, and net migration. These data are made available online in user-friendly spreadsheets. Since the early 1980s the UNPD also has published country level estimates of contraceptive prevalence at approximately 5-year intervals. This activity expanded after the adoption in 2015 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which called for the achievement of Target 3.7: "By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.” The UNPD now maintains a large data base, World Contraceptive Use 2020, that contains country-specific observations of key family planning indicators (e.g., contraceptive prevalence, unmet need and proportion of demand satisfied), based on household surveys available as of January 2020. This dataset is used to generate Estimates and Projections of Family Planning Indicators 2020 providing national, regional, and global estimates (from 1990) and projections (to 2030) of family planning indicators using Bayesian modeling techniques. The present report extracts the main findings from these recently updated data banks. In 2020, among 1.9 billion women of reproductive age (15–49 years), 1.1 billion women are considered to have a need for family planning; that is, they desire to limit or delay childbearing. Of these women, 851 million are using a modern method of contraception and 85 million are using a traditional method. An additional 172 million women are using no method at all, despite their desire to avoid pregnancy, and thus are considered to have an unmet need for family planning. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of women using modern contraceptive methods grew by 188 million worldwide. This increase was driven in almost equal parts by growth in the number of women of reproductive age and by a rise in the percentage of such women who use modern methods of contraception. The proportion of women of reproductive age who have their need for family planning satisfied by modern contraceptive methods (SDG indicator 3.7.1) has increased gradually from 73.6 percent in 2000 to 76.8 percent in 2020. However, these statistics vary widely among countries and regions. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa only half of all women who wanted to avoid a pregnancy in 2020 were using a modern contraceptive method, while this proportion is above 80 percent in much of the developed world. Adolescents continue to be a vulnerable group, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where 1 in 10 women aged 15–19 years gave birth in 2020 and one in five women aged 15–19 years were married or in a union. Since 2000, the number of women aged 15–19 years with an unmet need increased by more than half in sub-Saharan Africa while it decreased or remained constant in other regions of the world. The concluding chapter highlights policy implications and emphasizes the wide-ranging health and socioeconomic benefits of addressing women's reproductive needs and ensuring universal access to family planning. The concise text is aimed at a wide audience and contains numerous figures and tables. The report and its related online databases are a valuable resource for students, researchers, and policy makers.