EDITORIAL: According to UN’s latest World Fertility Report, Pakistan’s fertility rate has declined from six live births per woman in 1994 to 3.6 per woman in 2024. Still, it is the second highest rate in South Asia after Afghanistan.
If this demographic trend continues our population, warn experts, can double in 19.4 years. With the country already facing food shortages, water scarcity, and environmental challenges, uncontrolled population growth holds serious implications for future generations.
By addressing such issues, says the UN report, countries can create healthier, more productive populations, enhance quality of life, and ensure a sustainable future for the next generation.
But therein also lies the problem. The state’s inability to manage population growth affects its ability to address these issues.
An often cited reason why our family planning programme, initiated as far back as the 1960s, has failed to achieve the desired results is resistance from religious elements.
But there is the example of other deeply religious Muslim countries like Bangladesh and Iran, which have managed to make significant reductions in their respective fertility growth rates.
Bangladesh has been working with and through clerics to extend service delivery in hard-to-reach areas. It is not a minor matter that contraceptive prevalence rate in that country is 62 percent.
The use of modern contraceptives by women in Pakistan, on the other hand, is said to be around 25 percent — the lowest among other Muslim nations.
The present report rightly highlights the need for governments in the regions – like our own – that are still far from completing the fertility transitions to strengthen laws and enforcement mechanisms to protect the rights of girls and women, including laws to ban child marriage and regulations that guarantee full and equal access to reproductive healthcare.
However, laws alone unless backed by facilitative measures are of little help. Sindh, for instance, has enacted child marriages restraint law, setting the age for girls at 18 years, but is rarely implemented.
Access to education can be the real catalyst for change. Education not only provides individuals with opportunities to realise their potential and lead productive lives, but also to avoid underage marriages, and hence early child bearing.
As a matter of fact, better educated women tend to have fewer children than less-educated or illiterate women and girls.
Investments in both male and female education can help Pakistan lower fertility rates, and boost socio-economic development. Progress and prosperity of this state and society is closely linked to population control.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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