Lowering Total Fertility Rates in Developing States: Security and Policy Implications for Sub-Saharan Africa

摘要

While states in the developed world have achieved near-zero population growth, developing states continue on the upward arc of the population J Curve. This persistence of high Total Fertility Rates (the average number of live births per woman of childbearing age) traps sub-Saharan states in stage two of demographic transition, and contributes to social and governmental instability. Specifically, unchecked population growth creates four stressors which potentially create what Population Action International has called the 'demographic dimensions of conflict' youthful population age structures, rapid urban population growth, environmental degradation, and a reshaping of the age structure due to HIV infection and AIDS. These stressors synergistically combine to create instability, and potentially affect the security status of the sub-Saharan region. Indeed, a growing number of socioeconomic, environmental, and political pressures -- what Michael Renner calls 'problems without passports' -- have been earmarked as contributing to a more tumultuous and less stable world. The United States National Security Strategy explicitly, and to a greater degree, implicitly, addresses Africa, its deplorable conditions which suppress quality of life, and its propensity to breed transnational threats in the absence of good governance and economic solidity. This paper postulates that although high Total Fertility Rates are implicitly addressed in the National Security Strategy, this issue ought to be explicitly delineated therein as being key to regional -- and potentially, global -- security and stability. The paper further posits that United States national strategy therefore ought to address in a substantive way the need for reduction of Total Fertility Rates in sub- Saharan Africa, and it makes policy suggestions for achieving this goal.