Family planning programs in developing countries that offer contraceptives and reproductive health advice apparently do more than prevent pregnancies — they can keep girls in primary school for up to a year longer, even before the youngsters start to think about marriage and babies.

New research by Stanford Health Policy’s Grant Miller and Kim Singer Babiarz indicates that the availability of modern contraceptives alone can keep young girls in the classroom longer, likely because their parents develop greater expectations for their daughters’ long-term health outcomes and economic opportunities.

“What we find is that family planning exposure at a young age is linked to greater opportunities later in life – including economic empowerment,” said Babiarz, an SHP research scholar with a PhD in agricultural economics who focuses on women and children in development. “The fertility effects were modest; the most striking findings were the incentives created to keep girls in school and improvements in the types of jobs women have later in life.”

Babiarz and Miller, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of the Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development, unveiled their study at the annual meeting of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 7.

They conducted research with Christine Valente, an associate professor in the department of economics at the University of Bristol and Tey Nai Peng, the principal investigator for the Malaysia Family Life Survey. The Southeast Asia nation was one of the first low-income countries to provide modern contraceptives on a large scale, first in 1954 and then establishing a National Family Planning Board in 1966.

The government then scaled up its national program between 1966 and 1974 and conducted robust surveys with retrospective life histories and detailed community-level information about the timing of family planning availability. The use of contraceptives such as the pill, condoms and IUDs, went from 3 percent in 1961 to 39 percent in 1975. The country also experienced a decrease in the fertility rate of 6.2 children to 4.3 during the same period.

The researchers were able to compare what happened to Malaysian girls who were very young when contraceptives became available in their communities to those who were adolescents when they first gained access to modern contraception. They were not surprised by the effects on fertility; that has generally been the case in countries that adopt large-scale family planning programs.

But they also found unintended incentives: that girls in communities with family planning clinics stayed in school six months longer, increasing to more than an additional year for the girls who were born after the family planning programs began. And it didn’t matter if the girls had fewer younger siblings at home.

Other benefits later in life included better jobs when they became adults. When the Malaysian girls were grown, they were more likely to take in their own elderly parents (relative to their husbands’ parents), a signal of increased status in their households. In fact, they found that the incentives for investing in girls created by family planning may actually outweigh its direct effects, which work through reductions in fertility and changes in birth timing.

“The existence of family planning and contraceptives may lead parents to believe their daughters can participate in the labor force and that more schooling will therefore benefit them,” Miller said. “In other words, it can change their expectations about the world their daughter will live in one day.”

Few studies explicitly distinguish the incentive effects of family planning on women’s education from its direct effects on fertility. Miller said he hoped the new findings might lead policymakers to consider the broader beneficial consequences of family planning beyond those that work directly through changes in pregnancy and fertility.

“A central contribution of this working paper is that it studies the possible incentive effects of family planning programs for human capital investment in girls,” the authors wrote,” which could then translate into improvements in women’s economic status throughout their lives.”

Food security experts identify government support, policy implementation, private sector engagement and investment in smallholder farmers as keys to Africa’s agricultural future.

Food security experts from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) gathered to discuss transforming food production in Africa at Stanford on Nov. 29. The symposium, hosted by the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) examined the challenges, strategies, and possible solutions for catalyzing and sustaining an inclusive agriculture transformation in Africa. 

Moderator Ertharin Cousin, FSE visiting fellow and previous World Food Programme director with more than 25 years of experience on hunger, food, and resilience strategies, launched the panel by outlining Africa’s plight. “Today some 100 million of the farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa farm less than 2 hectares of land. Some 80 percent of those living in rural areas are poor. More than 30 percent of the rural population is chronically hungry and 35 percent of the under-five-year-olds are stunted. By 2050, the bulk of the world's population growth will take place on the continent. In fact, some project that 1.3 billion will be added to the continent, and Nigeria’s [population] will grow larger than the size of the United States between now and 2050,” Cousin said

.

While Africa continues to experience the highest occurrence of food insecurity worldwide, the continent also contains over 60 percent of the worlds uncultivated but fertile land. AGRA formed in 2006 to fulfill the vision that Africa can feed itself and the world. Panelists included Agnes Kalibata, AGRA President and former Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources of Rwanda; Kanayo F. Nwanze, AGRA board member and immediate past president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development; Usha Barwale Zehr, AGRA board member and Director and Chief Technology Officer of Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company Private Limited; and Rajiv Shah, AGRA board member, Rockefeller Foundation President and former Administer of USAID.

Kanayo F. Nwanze stressed the importance of agricultural transformation for Africa’s future. “No country in the world ever transformed itself without going through an agrarian change. No country. Europe, 17th; Japan, 18th century; 19th century was the US, your country; China, 20th century. Why should they be different from Africa? So, first and foremost, we have to have total agricultural transformation,” Nwanze said.

AGRA president, Agnes Kalibata, also spoke to the need for policy implementation and government support in helping drive change. “AGRA as an institution can only do so much. But these governments have the potential and the capacity to reach every corner of their countries. The problem is they are challenged by capacity to do that, by capacity to design proper programs, and by capacity to implement these programs,” Kalibata said.

Expanding on governments' ability to impact and drive change, Usha Barwale Zehr highlighted Asia’s success, specifically with strategic partnerships. “…we've done a lot of talking about public/private partnership. Not so much on the ground on implementing it in a manner, which happened in Asia, for instance, where there was policy, and, most importantly, government will. The government was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that agriculture was transformed at the end of it,” Zehr said.

Beyond government and policy support the panelists also addressed the need for innovation and access to seed technologies. “Why is it that the African farmer and the Indian farmer should not have access to what the American farmer has access to today and reaps benefit from it? …So it's the hybrids, the varieties, the GM technology. Tomorrow it'll be the gene-edited products. And after that we will talk about the satellite-based imaging data that we will use for developing drought-tolerant crops for that very, very small micro environment that existed in the one district in Nigeria,” Zehr said.

"By 2050, who is going to feed Africa? … It's the youth of today. But they're not going to be using the same technologies that exist today. Just think of what IT can do, aggregation, organization of farmer's groups. So, the elements are there. I see the agriculture of tomorrow meeting the challenge – for Africa meeting that challenge is Africa being at the forefront of feeding the world. Africa has to be able to feed itself first. And we have all the opportunities there,” Nwanze said.

This is the first installment of the Global Food Security Symposium series hosted by Stanford University's Center on Food Security and the Environment and generously supported by Zach Nelson and Elizabeth Horn. FSE is a joint initiative of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Phillip Lipscy examines Trump administration's decision to withdraw U.S. membership from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in an article in The Hill.

The Lee Shau Kee World Leaders Forum on “US and the Asia Pacific” was held on November 13^th, 2017. This event that brought 250 participants to the Center also marked the 5^th anniversary of the Stanford Center at Peking University’s (SCPKU) anniversary and 10^th anniversary of the Stanford China Program.  Stanford Political Science Professor and SCPKU Director Jean Oi welcomed the audience with remarks highlighting Stanford’s initiative to build China studies at the home campus with the creation of the China Program and in China with the construction of SCPKU -- Stanford’s “Bridge Across the Pacific.”   Professor Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, opened the forum with a stimulating keynote address on “The Historical Origins and Contemporary Consequences of President Trump’s Worldview.” In his talk, Prof. McFaul examined the President’s views and characterized them as fitting within but standing on the extreme end of long-standing foreign policy traditions.  Combining his scholarly expertise with his experience in the Obama administration, Prof. McFaul offered the audience a sharp, wide-ranging but balanced overview of the continuities between Obama’s and Trump’s policies and the stark difference in rhetoric between these two Presidents. He used dynamic representations of isolationists versus internationalists, and realists versus liberals to explain that foreign policy differences exist within political parties rather than between them. Prof. McFaul took the audience around the globe, with timely accounts of the continuities, the positive changes and the adverse changes in US foreign policy under President Trump in, for example, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.  Overall, he argued that democratic institutions in the US are open to evolution and renewal; that the structures of American leadership are still robust; and pointed to different historical periods (as during the inter-war period in the 1930’s; the rise of communism in the 1950’s; the rise of the Soviet Union in the 1970’s and Japan’s rapid ascendance in the 1980’s) when pundits declared America’s demise only to be proven wrong. Prof. McFaul asserted that current “predictions of permanent American decline is premature.”  Prof. McFaul, however, did point to North Korea as a major point of worry, which segued into the panel discussion that followed.

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Professor Michael McFaul, Director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,
keynotes SCPKU's Lee Shau Kee World Leaders Forum.
Courtesy of Stanford University.

What will happen with North Korea was a focus of the lively high-level panel discussion chaired by Professor Jean C. Oi on “The US, China and Asia Pacific” with Karl Eikenberry, Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Director of US-Asia Security Initiative at Stanford; Kathleen Stephens, Former US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC of Stanford; Thomas Fingar, Former chairman, National Intelligence Council; Former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; Shorenstein APARC Fellow; Yu Tiejun, Associate Professor and Vice President of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University; and Zhu Feng, Executive Director, China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea and Director, Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University.

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SCPKU World Leaders Forum panelists discuss future of US-Asia Pacific relations.
Courtesy of Stanford University

Prof. Fingar started the discussion on US-China relations, flatly rejecting the realist theory of conflict between rising and declining powers and the notion that “two tigers cannot get along.” He pointed out that interdependencies between the US and China have grown and that the US and China have more in common than ever before. Yet, with growing interdependence, chances for friction have also increased; thus, “having more issues,” he stated, “does not necessarily mean that the relationship is more fragile – perhaps the opposite [is true].” He also stated that China faces enormous challenges domestically and internationally, and that the US will be reacting to China rather than the other way around.

Amb. Stephens, Prof. Yu and Prof. Zhu all turned the discussion more squarely towards the intensifying North Korea missile crisis. The panelists all characterized this as a critical moment not only on the Korean peninsula but in all of Northeast Asia.  Amb. Stephens stressed how important this is in the working relationship of the US and China as they strive to manage future crises and issues. While everyone found agreement on one common point – i.e., the implausible prospects of a “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea -- each gave unique perspectives on what might happen on the Korean peninsula as the situation unfolds. Prof. Yu outlined three possible scenarios of (i) accepting North Korea as a nuclear power de facto; (ii) imposing increasingly draconian sanctions; and (iii) turning towards the military option against North Kore. But he did not express much optimism that any of these options would, in the end, provide good outcomes. Amb. Stephens, on the other hand, emphasized the strength and resilience of the US-ROK relationship stating “I wouldn’t underestimate [the US’] commitment to the ROK.” She also foresaw a future in which the US will conduct more military exercises, and install more anti-missile defense systems across Northeast Asia as a result of the North Korean threat – a prospect which, she surmised, the PRC would not welcome.

Prof. Zhu, on the other hand, offered a more optimistic perspective on the North Korean nuclear standoff by pointing to the increasing cooperation between the US and China. Asking the listeners to “please take the report that China is actively opposing North Korea seriously” he held out the hope that North Korea might return to the negotiating table once it saw that China was supporting the United States.

Amb. Eikenberry, as the final panelist to share his remarks, took the discussion to the broader Asia Pacific level and drew distinctions on “Asia Pacific” and “Indo Pacific,” as the latter description better reflects maritime flows, the geographical layout as well trade flows more accurately. He invited panelists to depict what would happen in different possible scenarios and outcomes relating to military crisis in the region. The panelists shared their views on action options involving sanctions and multilateral agreements, and agreed that countries should focus on achieving shared goals.