Population Reference Bureau

• November 8, 2018

Right now, the population of the world is growing, paradoxically, at both ends of the age spectrum, for different reasons and with different results. In the developed world, the widely reported concern is that fewer births, and longer lives among the old, whose numbers are rising, will altogether wreak havoc on social security and …

Development, Take a Look

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A New Commission to Focus on Women’s Rights Gaps in the Global Goals

Barbara Crossette

• January 11, 2016

A respected medical journal and a leading American population research and policy organization have teamed up to create a commission to fill gaps and turn vague promises in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into real gains for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. The initiative, sponsored by the London-based journal The Lancet …

Health and Population, LGBT, SDGs, Women

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Bangladeshi Pioneer Invests in Women From the ‘Ultra-Poor’

Barbara Crossette

• October 27, 2013

Fazle Hasan Abed runs the world’s largest nongovernmental development organization. He has garnered numerous international prizes, honorary degrees, very important friends and a British knighthood. Yet in the United States, Abed’s successes, won through a creative self-help program centered on mothers and their families, are virtually unknown. So here is his story, and BRAC‘s. …

Asia, Development, Women

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Today’s Youth, Facing Mostly Grim Futures

Barbara Crossette

• June 12, 2013

No group in the global population has more at stake after the Millennium Development Goals‘ deadline of 2015 than children and young people. That would seem obvious, but predictions vary widely on what kind of a world these young people will inherit and how they are prepared for whatever happens. The Population Reference Bureau, …

Africa, Asia, Health and Population

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Population Trends Disrupt Old Ideas in the Global North and South

Barbara Crossette

• February 5, 2013

RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico — The line used to be clearer between rich and poorer nations when discussions turned to a country’s ideal population size. In the industrial global north and the tiger economies of East Asia, family sizes shrank steadily over decades and economies grew. Small was good. In poorer countries, fertility often …

Development, Health and Population, Women

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Nagging Hunger Undermines Millennium Poverty Goal

Barbara Crossette

• May 2, 2012

The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals makes an ambitious demand: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger worldwide. It is now widely accepted that progress has been made in many countries on cutting the percentage of people living with less than the rock-bottom $1.25 a day. But decreasing hunger by half is another sadder …