Expenditures on population programes in developing regions : current levels and future requirements

World Bank staff working press number 697.
Population and development series number 4.

From data on population program expenditures in 46 countries, estimates are derived for total expenditures in the major regions of the developing world in 1980. In all, about $2 billion was spent by external donors and developing country governments on population programs: $1.2 billion in East and Southeast Asia, $300 million in South Asia, $200 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and $100 million each in the Middle East. and North Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa. Private family planning expenditures, estimated from data on the cost of different contraceptive. methods and on non program contraceptive use, added over $500 million to the total.
Future resource requirements up to the year 2000 are estimated assuming constant costs per contraceptive user, with number of users derived from alternative population projections. Contraceptive users will have to be 2.2 times as numerous in 2000 as in 1980 if the World Bank's standard population projection, which builds in some decline in fertility rates, is to be met. Users will have to be 2.6 times as numerous to achieve the faster "rapid fertility decline" built into the alternative, more optimistic projection described in the World Development Report 1984. Resource requirements increase proportionally. For the developing world as a whole, public expenditures will have to grow at a constant 5 percent a year in the standard projection to $5.6 billion in 2000. To achieve a more rapid fertility decline, expenditures will have to grow at 7 percent a year to $7.6 billion in 2000. More than in other regions, expenditures will have to grow at a faster rate in sub-Saharan Africa: 10 percent annual growth for the standard projection, 16 percent for rapid decline. The projected increases in private spending are roughly proportional.
Alternative estimates are provided under different assumptions: that contraceptive-use effectiveness is higher (and that less contraceptive use is therefore needed to achieve particular fertility targets); that the total unplanned fertility rate (a rate calculated to include all factors except contraception) follows a particular time path in each country; and that private costs vary in relation to number of users or are equal to program costs. The results do not vary greatly from the base projections.