Aid Type Birth Control

Birth Control aid is a major campaign to lower birthrates. It has a reversible supply component, and a compounding educational and cultural change component. When it ends, the supplies are cut off and fertility rates rise again, but not to their prior levels.

The number of children to have is determined one woman at a time. Most humans will make the best of the choices available to them. A birth control campaign can increase access to birth control methods. It can increase knowledge of methods. Quickly or slowly, it can change cultural attitudes and expectations. Since women have to make their choices within their social framework, shifting the whole society's expectations may sometimes be needed.

Having children later in life can significantly change the population growth rate. That may seem puzzling: how could the same fertility rate yield a different growth rate? But the two rates have different denominators. Population growth is per year. Fertility (x.xx children per woman) is per woman's life. Birth Control aid shifts childbearing age upward by a year per level of aid. That change is also partly permanent and partly reversible when the aid stops.

There's a big difference between cultures in how much difference birth control availability makes. In the developed world, cheap and effective birth control has been widely available for maybe 35 years now. In most of Europe, Canada, and Japan, populations are already declining (omitting immigration), with an average of less than 2 children per woman. The United States and United Kingdom hover just at replacement reproduction, around 2. Lebanon, Israel, and Mexico probably have nearly the same birth control availability, but their fertility rate is 2.7. Combined with low mortality, 2.7 still gives a fairly sharply climbing population.

According to World Resources 2000-2001 (full reference on the Credits page), in the past 25 years, average fertility rates fell from 1.9 to 1.6 in the developing world, a decrease of 15.8%. In the developing world, fertility fell from 4.7 to 3.0, a decrease of 36.2% in only 25 years.

Depending on what culture you have in mind, it may be silly to continue Birth Control aid past the point where it brings fertility down to about 2.1 children per woman on average. But the simulator won't stop this.

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