The End of World Population Growth depends on further progress in Girls' Education

According to a report by Brookings Institution, there is a relation between girls' education and birth rate. With education, a girl gets more aware of family planning and the fact that child marriage and getting pregnant at an early age is something to keep away from. 

Almost universally, better-educated women have fewer and healthier children and are in better health themselves.

Oxford University's World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century study states that if every girl, “especially girls”: never forgetting the boys, gets the access to at least secondary education i.e till class 10th, the world population on reaching 2050 can come down by a  level of 150 crores. As reported by the UN, the world population along 2050 will be 980 crores.

In line with the broad-based secondary education, states well equipped with women schooling in India witnessed considerably lower birth rate in comparison to those backward in terms of women education.

As evidence contained in a recent report by Sample Registration System, the birthrate was just 13.9% per 1000 in Kerela with a 92% literacy rate. Whereas with a women literacy rate of 59.5%, Uttar Pradesh in 2011 had a birthrate of 24.8%.

Girls’ education is the world’s best investment with the widest-ranging and multifaceted returns. These vast returns from education are just as strong in poorer nations as well.

Countries with restricted or insufficient education have women giving birth to a minimum of 5.4 kids. On the contrary, nations where secondary education is available for girls, women there give birth to 2.7 kids. 

Girls with the availability of colleges give birth to 2.2 kids.

This is not to suggest that we should de-emphasize primary education; one cannot run before learning to walk or reach secondary school without attending and completing primary school. But future national education plans should be devised with universal secondary education in mind and should be judged by their strategies’ effectiveness in reaching such goals.