Publication: Beginning a Family and Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle: Situation Analysis for Zambia
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2015-11-25
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2016-03-07
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Decisions during youth have great long-term impacts on human development, which is key to poverty alleviation and economic development. During adolescence, two of the primary transitions are beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. Youth face many choices and challenges around these key decisions, such as when to initiate sex, when to marry, when to have children, and whether to engage in risky behaviors- all of which affect their future health and future opportunities. Consequences of these early decisions can have long-lasting effects on adolescents and their communities, potentially increasing public health costs and depleting human capital. This policy brief discusses a situation analysis of adolescent girls in Zambia with respect to these transitions and highlights the challenges they face. Specifically, issues of reproductive health (fertility, maternal health, use of family planning), early marriage, use of family planning, nutrition and risky behaviors are analyzed and presented.
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“Hasan, Rifat; Bakilana, Anne; Moucheraud, Corrina. 2015. Beginning a Family and Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle: Situation Analysis for Zambia. Policy Brief Zambia;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23869 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Beginning a Family and Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11-25)Decisions during youth have great long-term impacts on human development, which is key to poverty alleviation and economic development. During adolescence, two of the primary transitions are beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. Youth face many choices and challenges around these key decisions, such as when to initiate sex, when to marry, when to have children, and whether to engage in risky behaviors – all of which affect their future health and future opportunities. Consequences of these early decisions can have long-lasting effects on adolescents and their communities, potentially increasing public health costs and depleting human capital. This note briefly presents program and policy approaches that have been implemented in different contexts for addressing these two key transition periods of youth: beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. It concludes by presenting a set of programmatic lessons and investment recommendations based on the global evidence.Publication Beginning a Family and Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05)Decisions during youth have great long-term impacts on human development, which is key to poverty alleviation and economic development. During adolescence, two of the primary transitions are beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. Youth face many choices and challenges around these key decisions, such as when to initiate sex, when to marry, when to have children, and whether to engage in risky behaviors- all of which affect their future health and future opportunities. Consequences of these early decisions can have long-lasting effects on adolescents and their communities, potentially increasing public health costs and depleting human capital. This policy brief discusses a situation analysis of adolescent girls in Malawi with respect to these transitions and highlights the challenges they face. Specifically, issues of reproductive health (fertility, maternal health, use of family planning), early marriage, use of family planning, nutrition and risky behaviors are analyzed and presented.Publication Beginning a Family and Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05)Decisions during youth have great long-term impacts on human development, which is key to poverty alleviation and economic development. During adolescence, two of the primary transitions are beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. Youth face many choices and challenges around these key decisions, such as when to initiate sex, when to marry, when to have children, and whether to engage in risky behaviors – all of which affect their future health and future opportunities. Consequences of these early decisions can have long-lasting effects on adolescents and their communities, potentially increasing public health costs and depleting human capital. This note briefly presents program and policy approaches that have been implemented in different contexts for addressing these two key transition periods of youth: beginning a family and adopting a healthy lifestyle. It concludes by presenting a set of programmatic lessons and investment recommendations based on the global evidence.Publication Teenage Pregnancy and Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean : On Teenage Fertility Decisions, Poverty and Economic Achievement(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012)The pregnancy project sought to expose the existence, and challenge the validity, of stereotypes about Hispanic women. The charade explored the underlying motivations of the many who responded with a wide range of reactions. The specific objectives of this regional study are: to establish a thorough description of the magnitude of the issue and its potential implications for social advancement; to advance the understanding of the risk factors, motivations and impacts at the household level-as a determinant of poverty and a cause of intra-and intergenerational poverty traps; to illuminate the coping mechanisms and their individual and social implications; to highlight the gender-related issues that have historically provoked asymmetric costs to boys and girls; and to provide elements that support specific policies on this matter. In the last decade, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have been moving in the right direction and the region has experienced important gains in gender equality of endowments (assets) and economic opportunities. In most LAC countries, girls have been achieving gender parity in primary school enrollment and even outperforming boys at the secondary and tertiary level. The present report reviews the factors associated with teenage pregnancy and early childbearing and builds a framework to explore these issues systematically, towards the design of effective policy interventions in LAC. Teen pregnancy and early childbearing remain a challenge in the region, particularly given the association of these phenomena with poverty and lack of opportunities, and the concern that it may prevent women from taking full advantage of their human development assets and opportunities. The main message of the report is that poverty and lack of opportunities are key factors associated to early childbearing.Publication Adolescent Health(Washington, DC, 2002-11)More than a quarter of the world's population is between the ages of 10 and 24. Most (86 percent) of the world's 1.7 billion young people live in developing countries, where they are often 30 percent or more of the population. At first glance, youth appears to be a relatively healthy although not hazard-free period of life. Young people account for 15 percent of the disease and injury burden worldwide and over one million die each year, mainly from preventable causes. Nonetheless, roughly 70 percent of premature deaths among adults can be linked to behavior initiated during adolescence, such as tobacco use, poor eating habits, and risky sex. Investing in health and development of young people is not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing for countries that want their economies to grow faster: 1) reducing HIV infection in young people will reduce the devastating economic impact of HIV/AIDS; 2) when young people postpone marriage and childbearing, family size falls and population growth slows. Combined with investments in health and education, these changes contribute to higher economic growth and incomes; and 3) investments to head off negative behaviors such as tobacco use and drug abuse will pay off later for individuals and for society.
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