The world population surpassed the seven billion mark in 2011, yet many women and couples still lack access to reproductive health services. These facts have profound implications for maternal and child health, environmental quality, and food security. Global Population and Reproductive Health provides an introduction to an important and timely public health topic. The text is unique in that it explores the inextricable link between population and reproductive health – a connection that is often overlooked – as well as their impact on global and local environmental issues. Students will come away with a clear understanding of the relationships among all these issues, and the vital need for integrated policies and international cooperation. Contents Include: 1. Overview 2. Measures and Theories 3. Health 4. Related Issues 5. Policies
The evaluation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) by the Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (DCP3) focuses on maternal conditions, childhood illness, and malnutrition. Specifically, the chapters address acute illness and undernutrition in children, principally under age 5. It also covers maternal mortality, morbidity, stillbirth, and influences to pregnancy and pre-pregnancy. Volume 3 focuses on developments since the publication of DCP2 and will also include the transition to older childhood, in particular, the overlap and commonality with the child development volume. The DCP3 evaluation of these conditions produced three key findings: 1. There is significant difficulty in measuring the burden of key conditions such as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, nonsexually transmitted infections, infertility, and violence against women. 2. Investments in the continuum of care can have significant returns for improved and equitable access, health, poverty, and health systems. 3. There is a large difference in how RMNCH conditions affect different income groups; investments in RMNCH can lessen the disparity in terms of both health and financial risk.
Selected papers presented in the International Conference on Emerging Population Issues in the Asia-Pacific Region: Challenges for the 21st Century, held on 10-13, December, 2006 at International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai; these papers broadly deal with issues in the Asian region.
With a new introduction, this fully revised edition of a feminist classic reveals the dangers of contemporary population control tactivs, especially as they affect women in developing countries.
Yemen is an arid and mountainous country in the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is mostly rural, with over half the population below age 15, and more than one-fifth of its 22 million people are malnourished. One of the poorest Arab countries, Yemen's birth and population growth rates are also among the world's highest. With an annual growth rate of 3.4 %, the population could double by 2030. The country's current fertility rate is 6.2. This reflects a high birthrate, 39.2 per 1,000 population, and a declining mortality rate, 11 per 1,000 population. Yemen's infant mortality rate, however, still ranks as one of the highest in the world. This includes a mortality rate of 102 per 1,000 live births for children under 5 years old in 2003. From the late 1980s through the late 1990s, Yemen experienced a high maternal mortality ratio of 351 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Maternal deaths account for about 42% of all deaths among Yemeni women between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine. Since the unification of Yemen in 1990, several structural reforms and policy changes have been introduced to control its population growth. Although the government recognizes population growth as a major challenge to development, little progress has been made in implementing population policy and societal consensus remains elusive. Thus, the structural context of reproduction in Yemen exposes women to a large number of risks. The disadvantages of poverty and poor health among women are passed on from one generation to the next. Even during the course of reproduction, poor women face several threats to their physical and mental well being. While these disadvantages have been well chronicled in most societies, not much is known about reproductive health in many poor Arab countries. But for a few rich Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the state of reproductive health among women in poor Arab states has been hardly investigated. Although, more recently, several studies have attempted to document poor reproductive health conditions in this part of the world, a few countries go unnoticed mostly due to the lack of access to national level data. The Republic of Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, has for several reasons failed to draw the attention of social science researchers. The authors began a number of studies to learn more about Yemeni women's reproductive health under the conditions of dire social and economic disadvantages caused by extreme poverty. This book is a compilation of the authors' studies on Yemen and attempts to draw conclusions which would not have been possible with a single study. The book examines the reproductive health of women in Yemen. Women's reproductive health has emerged as an area of concern among development agencies and international agencies such as the United Nations. However, theoretical models for examining reproductive health appear to lag behind the massive amount of reproductive health rhetoric in the recent years. Even though there is no uniform definition of reproductive health, we characterize reproductive health by focusing on the three components of fertility: intercourse, conception and gestation. This method directs attention to the context of reproduction in developing countries. In addition, the book reveals the previously underappreciated role of abortion in contributing to the first stages of fertility decline. The study finds that higher economic levels and improved social conditions for women do help bring about real improvements in many dimensions of reproductive health. Women's Reproductive Health in Yemen is an important book for scholars in demography and population health.
Since the late 1990s approaches to women's reproductive health has shifted from a service-based model to a human rights approach. This approach associates reproductive health with freedom from discrimination and enjoyment of a satisfying and safe sex life, and full access to information and services related to reproduction. In spite of this shift, and the global effort to promote women's reproductive health through the enhancement of human rights and gender equality, progress has been very slow. In this book the author fills a much-needed empirical study of women's reproductive health. The author assesses data from 137 developing countries (or areas) and challenges the prevailing bioscience and public health models by linking women's reproductive health to gender equality measures and development policies. Discussion on abortion rights, regional variations and reproductive health needs among refugees and internally displaced persons are also discussed. This is a timely study which provides a theoretical and social policy basis for monitoring and improving women's reproductive health in developing countries. This is particularly important in the light of insufficient research in the field and a lack of analysis on the empirical and theoretical linkages between reproductive health and gender equality. The book will be of interest to researchers, professionals and students interested in women's health issues, gender/women's studies and human rights.
First published in 1999, this volume represents an empirical model of reproductive rights in developing countries. The model encompasses three explanations of reproductive rights. The first proposes that reproductive rights levels are negatively related to population growth. The second explanation argues that gender equality has a positive effect on reproductive rights. Finally, the authors propose that women’s education has a positive effect on reproductive rights. The empirical model takes into account the effects of modernization, secularization, and family planning program effort on population growth, women’s education, and gender equality.
This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The essays focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders.
Global population policies are under intense scrutiny as environmental and development organizations worry about the threat of overpopulation and call for stronger measures of population control. At the same time, women's organizations in both developing and industrialized countries are intensifying their attacks on the simplistic thinking of the population controllers and the quest for a technological fix on the part of the family-planning establishment. Population Policy and Women's Rights presents a forceful argument for a more responsive approach to fertility limitation in developing countries--one that builds on women's concerns about their survival and security and strengthens women's rights. Ruth Dixon-Mueller reviews the history of the debate between feminists and the birth control movement, examines the forces affecting U.S. population policy on the domestic and international fronts, and documents the relationship between women's reproductive rights and their rights in other areas. Dixon-Mueller begins by focusing on the evolution of the political positions of the women's movement and the birth control/population control movements. She examines the relationship between different aspects of women's rights and reproductive choice in developing countries. She concludes with a proposal for a woman-centered approach to reproductive policy-making, based on promoting women's rights and protecting women's sexual and reproductive health. Written from a sociological perspective, Population Policy and Women's Rights is recommended for researchers, policy-makers, and students in the fields of population, development, women's studies, and human rights.
