Future budgets should address family planning

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, on the topic of human capital development in his speech on Budget 2020, said:

“The female labour force participation rate continues to stagnate at around 55%, far from our target of 60%. A recent World Bank study concluded that if all barriers against Malaysian women were removed and women’s participation in our economy increased, the country’s income per capita could grow by 26.2%.”

The proposal was to give wage incentives to returning women workers of RM500 per month for two years, and a corresponding hiring incentive for employers up to RM300 per month for two years.

Let me ask a question, as women leave the workforce for various reasons, one of the most common being pregnancy and subsequently childcare needs.

How does a woman return to work if she has an unintended pregnancy, which is common, or too many childcare needs and is unable to find or afford alternative childcare? In addition, how does a woman come back to work if she suffers pregnancy complications and needs a long time to recuperate?

Research predicts that 80,000 Malaysian women will leave the workforce in 2020 due to unintended pregnancies.

About 40% of all pregnancies are unintended. Women with unintended pregnancies are also less prepared, emotionally and financially. They tend to suffer higher risks of pregnancy complications, have less antenatal care, and are more challenged to meet the many post-delivery needs.

These consequences are more profound in the lower socio-economic strata and among the less educated, thus the vicious cycle of getting poorer and sicker.

There is a clear link between family planning, women empowerment, and human capital development.

At its core, family planning allows women to plan when they want to get pregnant, and to avoid unintended pregnancies.

When women can plan their pregnancies, it gives them better control over their lives and families. It allows them to pursue better education and professional developments, to stay in the workforce for longer, and to meet the needs of career advancement. This leads to a long-term cascading effect in building the country’s human capital potential.

Modern contraceptives are not just family planning tools. They add to myriads of health benefits for women such as decreasing menstrual pain or bleeding and reducing the risks of ovarian, uterine and bowel cancers, among others. This allows women to stay healthy and to participate in the workforce longer and more productively.

Family planning saves the lives of mothers and infants by decreasing unintended pregnancies as well as promoting better maternal and infant health through longer inter-pregnancy intervals.

Family planning investments are also cost-effective. It has been shown that a dollar invested in family planning can yield healthcare cost savings in maternal care and newborn services of four dollars. A dollar invested in the highly effective hormonal implant contraceptive, for example, can yield healthcare cost savings of 16 dollars.

Recent case studies in India and Nigeria show that if both countries were to meet their family planning commitments by 2030, India could reduce its overall household expenses by US$89.7 billion and Nigeria by US$12.9 billion.

The immense benefits of investing in family planning for women’s health, social well-being, economic empowerment and human capital development in the long term cannot be ignored. I hope that future budgets will take this issue into consideration, given the many repeated calls for this to be done.

Dr John Teo is an FMT reader.