The Change We Seek: Raising our Quality of Life

The state's population continues to grow due to a high fertility rate, with women in Adamawa having an average of 5.8 children, compared to the national average of 5.5. This rapid population growth is hindering the state's development, particularly in areas such as education, health, agriculture, and economic development. The use of family planning is low in Adamawa, with only 1.5 percentage points increase in family planning use between 2008 and 2013. As a result, family sizes are large, and the population is heavily concentrated among children, with 46 percent of the population under the age of 15. This large group is dependent on families and the government for meeting basic health, education, and food needs. The high fertility rate generates an age structure that is heavily concentrated among children, with a population pyramid showing a large bulge in the younger age group. This age structure has significant implications for the state's development, as it will have a powerful momentum for future population growth that challenges economic development now and in the future. The benefits of smaller families are numerous, including preventing maternal and infant death and disability, reducing additional costs to health systems, and enabling greater investments in the quality of children's schooling. Smaller family sizes also make it easier to create jobs for young people entering the labor force. Adamawa can learn from East Asia's experience, where several countries achieved rapid economic growth and emerged as some of the strongest economies in the world by significantly lowering their birth rates. Thailand is a success story in this regard, where the rapid fall in fertility helped to boost economic development. In a single generation, Thailand moved from being a low-income country to a more prosperous middle-income country. The country's GDP per capita increased from $332 in 1960 to $1,427 in 1990, while the average number of births per woman decreased from 7.0 in 1960 to 2.3 in 1990. This transition contributed to a demographic dividend, and economists estimate that women having fewer children accounted for up to one-third of the economic expansion in Thailand between 1965 and 1990.