During the last three decades of the 20th century, demographic transition - a population's shift from high to low rates of birth and death - was associated with continuous declines in the vulnerability of countries to civil conflicts (ethnic wars, antigovernment insurgencies and terrorism resulting in multiple deaths). This relationship suggests that a range of policies and programs that promote demographic transition by encouraging small, healthy and better educated families and longer lives will improve the prospects for political stability in developing countries and enhance global security in the future.

At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, the international community pledged to share the costs of reproductive health care in developing countries, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005. Donor nations committed to provide one-third of this total, or $6.1 billion. Donors still fall far short of this pledge, once inflation is taken into account, and actual resource needs are dramatically higher today.

Family planning dramatically improves the health and chances of survival of both women and their children. At the same time, when parents are more confident their children will survive, they are more likely to have fewer children and plan the size of their families. U.S. international development and humanitarian assistance should support both child health and family planning programs as complementary initiatives.

More than 850 million people worldwide are classified as undernourished, many of whom suffer from chronic hunger (also known as food insecurity). Rapid population growth is intensifying food insecurity in parts of the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where some countries' populations are doubling and tripling every 30-50 years. Greater investments in voluntary family planning programs and supplies, including contraceptives, are urgently required to meet the needs of more than 200 million women worldwide who wish to delay or end their childbearing but do not have access to modern and effective contraceptive methods.

Sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, are among the most important elements of the global effort to contain the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Through a well-established infrastructure, they help provide the supplies, education and information that are known to be effective in preventing the spread of infection.

Reproductive illnesses and unintended pregnancies undermine economic development by weakening and killing adults in the prime of their working lives, by disrupting and cutting short the lives of their children, and by placing heavy financial and social burdens on families. In most developing-country settings, much of the loss of life and human productivity that is due to poor reproductive health could be prevented with affordable and cost-effective programs.

Economists credit declining fertility, from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, as a major contributor to sustained economic growth among the Asian Tigers - the economically vibrant nations of South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the former Hong Kong Territory. Research indicates that shifts to smaller family sizes and slower rates of population growth played a key role in the creation of an educated workforce, the accumulation of household and government savings, the rise in wages, and the impressive growth of investments in manufacturing technology.

Family planning opponents in the U.S. Congress have long sought to place burdensome restrictions on U.S. population assistance. One such restriction is the Mexico City Policy, known to its opponents as the Global Gag Rule, which has proven detrimental to America's foreign policy objectives, to family planning programs in developing countries, and to women's health.

Continued high rates of AIDS-related illness and death in some of the world's poorest countries could impose unprecedented changes in their population age structures, stunt their economic development and retard their demographic transition – the change from a population characterized by short lives and large families, to one with long lives and small families. These impacts promise to leave the most seriously AIDS-affected countries even more vulnerable to political instability and civil conflict. How the world responds to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in this decade could bear heavily upon the future of global security.

The West African nation of Niger was propelled to the headlines several months ago over reports of starving and dying children amid denials by its government that the country was enduring a sustained food emergency (seasonal fluctuations in the availability of food are not unusual in the arid Sahel region, they argued). Niger is perhaps better known as the country falsely accused by the Bush Administration of selling uranium to Iraq – an issue that later became the object of the Valerie Plame scandal. But Niger is confronting a genuine scandal: one-quarter of its people are facing yearly food shortages. Meanwhile, its population is set to double in less than 20 years and contraceptive use among Niger's men and women remains at one of the lowest levels of any country in the world.