Kudos to Inside Climate News for covering a topic many are hiding from: The fact that many benefitted from a clearly unsustainable family planning system that hurt future generations, and how to take wealth from the top to now compensate them.
The solution? The United Nations should shift from growth-based family policies to #FairStart family planning. Yes, it’s that simple, and we are urging the United Nations Human Rights Council to take action.
These are the facts:
- 600 Percent ROIs: These returns come from changing family planning to invest more in young women and ensure they delay having kids in favor of education.
- 13%: New research by Nobel laureate economist James Heckman and his coauthors suggests that, after accounting more accurately for long-term health and other benefits, the return on investment for early childhood programs is even higher than previously believed, at 13 percent rather than 7-10 percent.
- 1 MILLION SPECIES face extinction thanks to unsustainable growth-driven human activity, the U.N. reports.
- Our current family planning systems provide no minimum standard of well-being for future children, allowing children to be born into failing state systems because their parents cannot care for them. That exacerbates inequity and ensures rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor.
- Child-first family planning provides a clear human rights-based solution and path forward. It’s sustainable and equitable and reflected in the worldwide trend towards families that can invest more in each child and ensure a safer future.
