Evaluating the Impact of Millennium Development Goal 5 on Universal Access to Reproductive Health

Aisha Dasgupta, United Nations Population Division
Mark Wheldon, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Vladimira Kantorova, United Nations Population Division
Philipp Ueffing , United Nations Population Division

We employ a Bayesian Hierarchical Model to provide insights on “Did the 2005 inclusion in Millennium Development Goal 5 of contraceptive prevalence (CP), and unmet need, contribute to accelerated progress in family planning?”. We obtained 1200 observations of CP and 499 of unmet need between 1950-2017. We compare results from published model estimates (“true” situation) in 2015, to a historic scenario excluding post-2005 data, imagining a world with no MDG5. Overall, the historic scenario projected higher CP and lower unmet need in 2015, than what actually occurred, particularly in Middle Africa and Western Africa. Despite the efforts of the MDGs, the field of family planning did not perform as well in 2015 as had been expected in 2005. It is not possible to attribute change entirely to one initiative. We argue that this approach can be used to assess the impact of other initiatives, such as FP2020 and the SDGs.

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 Presented in Session 27. Examining the Role of Population and Reproductive Health Policies and Practices