Thanks, Matt. Sorry I was heading out earlier so didn’t have time to elaborate as much as I would have liked. When I say unmet need for contraception (UMC) is low, I meant proportionally—by 2010 it was just over 10%, and I would guess is significantly lower still now. Of course, 10% globally is still a lot of people, but these are presumably the hardest people to reach and it is not clear how cost-effective doing so would be—moreover, it seems clear that even if we did manage to reach those 10%, the abortion rate would hardly decline by that much—so it is a pretty limited strategy for reducing abortions, if it is effective at all.
Regarding the second paper, table 5 indicates that only 8% of women with UMC globally lacked access (including because of cost). Table 3 in the third paper shows similar. So it still seems that only a very small proportion of women globally—perhaps 1% in 2010 - have a UMC because of lack of access to contraception.
There probably are interventions which could increase contraceptive uptake—but I don’t think they are by any means simple, and they are not generally solving lack of access per se. The access is there, even if the relevant education or empowerment of women is not. As indicated in the rest of my previous post, even if this were solved, it is still not clear to me that it would reduce abortions, given the counterbalancing effects contraception promotion has on sexual behaviour and desired family size. It seems particularly doubtful that it would reduce abortions by a large amount.
You are right that as education increases, desired family size generally falls, and contraception demand will grow. But I don’t see that there is a significant risk of contraception supply failing anytime soon. Even under the Mexico City Policy, which was widely held to significantly impede access to contraception, contraceptive use in the affected countries (turquoise—unaffected countries in orange) rapidly increased:
This, I suppose, is relevant to the EA discourse on neglectedness—with the emphasis on contraception in international development circles, it seems unlikely that slightly trimmed down support for it is going to significantly impede it or significantly increase abortion rates. But I confess I am only really on the peripheries of EA so I might be outdated with the neglectedness stuff.
Thanks, Matt. Sorry I was heading out earlier so didn’t have time to elaborate as much as I would have liked. When I say unmet need for contraception (UMC) is low, I meant proportionally—by 2010 it was just over 10%, and I would guess is significantly lower still now. Of course, 10% globally is still a lot of people, but these are presumably the hardest people to reach and it is not clear how cost-effective doing so would be—moreover, it seems clear that even if we did manage to reach those 10%, the abortion rate would hardly decline by that much—so it is a pretty limited strategy for reducing abortions, if it is effective at all.
Regarding the second paper, table 5 indicates that only 8% of women with UMC globally lacked access (including because of cost). Table 3 in the third paper shows similar. So it still seems that only a very small proportion of women globally—perhaps 1% in 2010 - have a UMC because of lack of access to contraception.
There probably are interventions which could increase contraceptive uptake—but I don’t think they are by any means simple, and they are not generally solving lack of access per se. The access is there, even if the relevant education or empowerment of women is not. As indicated in the rest of my previous post, even if this were solved, it is still not clear to me that it would reduce abortions, given the counterbalancing effects contraception promotion has on sexual behaviour and desired family size. It seems particularly doubtful that it would reduce abortions by a large amount.
You are right that as education increases, desired family size generally falls, and contraception demand will grow. But I don’t see that there is a significant risk of contraception supply failing anytime soon. Even under the Mexico City Policy, which was widely held to significantly impede access to contraception, contraceptive use in the affected countries (turquoise—unaffected countries in orange) rapidly increased:
This, I suppose, is relevant to the EA discourse on neglectedness—with the emphasis on contraception in international development circles, it seems unlikely that slightly trimmed down support for it is going to significantly impede it or significantly increase abortion rates. But I confess I am only really on the peripheries of EA so I might be outdated with the neglectedness stuff.
Interesting points! Thanks for taking the time to respond and clarify.