Decades of delusional policymaking regarding population have left Pakistan at a point where no amount of new job creation or economic growth seems sufficient to improve standards of living or even reduce poverty. The population growth rate currently stands at 2.55%, while over 45% of our 251 million citizens live in poverty, according to the World Bank. By 2050, the population could top 400 million, and it appears near-impossible that the government will be able to create jobs and other economic opportunities for these new citizens.
Policymakers lived in a bubble where, while the stars of the developing world listened to economists and controlled population growth to ensure access to education and healthcare while encouraging investment and avoiding resource scarcity, we kept encouraging people to have large families without providing them with schools or basic medical facilities. And then forcing them to continue in the cycle of poverty by crushing the working-age population with the need to sustain several dependents, eliminating their ability to save or invest.
Even if we were to address the population growth rate today, it will be several years, if not decades, before the impact of population policy reforms becomes visible. By then, inequalities will have become even more pronounced, unemployment even more problematic, and water scarcity and food insecurity even more widespread.
This is why reforms must be undertaken on a war footing, lest the country collapse under the weight of its own population. Religious leaders opposed to family planning need to be silenced, access to contraception needs to be near-universal, even in rural areas, and taboos around discussing related subjects need to be removed. Finally, we need job creation for today and tomorrow, because working women usually have fewer children anyway, and women with their own incomes have the agency to decide how many children they want.
