Blog
Family planning in Ethiopia: demographic transition and so much more
29th October 2013
Ethiopia has experienced falling crude birth rates in recent years - as seen in the graph from World Data Atlas below - but there is still a significant "unmet need" for family planning in the country. An article from allAfrica explores the various causes and consequences of this gap between supply and demand.
This is an excellent piece by Dr Kesetebirhan Admasu, the minister of health in Ethiopia, which is useful for pupils studying population and/or development in Geography at AS/A2.
http://m.allafrica.com/stories/201310221394.html/?maneref=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2Fp82uSJe4pL
Achieving lower birth rates is well known to be more difficult than reducing death rates as the former involves behavioural and attitudinal changes rather than the more straight forward adoption of medical advances and improved sanitation (which result in relatively rapid decreased mortality). Factors influencing fertility are varied and complex but access to family planning, including contraception, undoubtedly has an important role.
In reading this article students could be asked to draw a spider diagram teasing out all the barriers to family planning (involving both physical and human factors). Students should also be encouraged to see the issue in a wider context - how does the unmet need in family planning impact Ethiopia's demographic and economic development? How does this relate to social justice and human rights? What strategies have been employed to try and increase access to family planning? And why are these particularly appropriate for a country like Ethiopia?
When teaching about fertility and development I often encourage students to analyse scatter graphs (drawing them using MS Excel and World Bank data if we have time) with data plotted such as GDP per capita and fertility, literacy and contraception use and so on. Obviously causality cannot be assumed from a scatter graph but patterns can be explored and correlations discussed.
The study of population dynamics remains central to many specifications and this piece about Ethiopia puts many of the issues into context.