Impacts of Family Planning on Food Security

Evidence shows that family planning can decrease fertility rates and slow the pace of population growth, thus reducing pressure on food security. In this way, family planning supports the four main pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization/consumption, and stability. Food availability, the first pillar, is the supply of food in relation to the amount of food needed to feed a population adequately. Family planning links to food availability through its effect on fertility and population size. As a population grows, making sure that its need for food does not outstrip the amount of food produced can be challenging. Family planning is also linked to food availability through its effect on women's roles and gender equality: Unintended pregnancy, breastfeeding, and child care may limit women's mobility and the time they are able to spend learning new agricultural techniques and contributing to the food supply. Rapid population growth can be behind the trends in developing countries of decreasing household plot size and expansion of agriculture and grazing into marginal, less productive lands. These trends may hamper a population's ability to adapt to the agricultural effects of climate change. Food access, the second pillar, is linked to family planning largely through poverty, with low-income families less likely to have access to family planning. Large households may have fewer resources to spend on each family member, resulting in less food consumed per capita. High fertility can also limit women's labor force participation and thus their ability to contribute to household food security. In urban areas with fast population growth, people must buy rather than raise all of their food, which can limit access to food, particularly by the urban poor. Food utilization/consumption, the third pillar, is affected by family planning, because pregnant and lactating women have higher biophysical energy requirements. In addition, rapidly growing urban populations may strain sanitation infrastructures to the point of increasing waterborne diseases, which can compromise nutrient absorption. Household food stability, the fourth pillar, is present when populations have consistent food availability, access, and use over time. It is associated with resilience—the ability to adapt to crises. Lack of access to voluntary family planning compromises food stability, because it increases the probability of high-risk pregnancies and maternal mortality and morbidity. The Health Policy Project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, conducted a review of existing empirical evidence on the ways in which family planning improves food security. The review examined the relationships among family planning, population growth, and food security from the perspectives of the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization/consumption, and stability. Conceptually, access to voluntary family planning has many connections to food security, with the influence of family planning on population size being a paramount factor. Today's fertility rate—the average number of children per woman—largely determines population growth in the future. Family planning is one of the main determinants of fertility change, with modern contraceptives being highly effective in averting unintended pregnancy. Decreasing the number of births per woman decreases both household size and, at the aggregate level, a country's future population size.